Aerial image of the area where the third nuclear power plant is to be built in Angra, next to the Angra 1 and Angra 2 plants, in a coastal area near the city of Angra dos Reis, south of Rio de Janeiro, in southeastern Brazil. Credit: Divulgação Eletronuclear

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Mar 29 2019 (IPS)

Two military-inspired initiatives are leading Brazil’s new government, which includes a number of generals, down the path of mega-projects, which have had disastrous results in the last four decades.

Completing the country’s third nuclear power plant and setting the construction of eight others on track is the plan under study, announced by the Minister of Mines and Energy, Admiral Bento Albuquerque.

Brazil’s extreme right-wing government risks repeating the disaster of the nuclear programme of the 1964-1985 military dictatorship , which in the 1970s also began to build nine generating units and managed to put only two in operation, at a cost of tens of billions of dollars, while leaving a third plant unfinished.A widespread paranoia among the Brazilian military is the alleged threat to national sovereignty posed by indigenous reservations and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), which they say could lead to a declaration of independence or to the "internationalisation" of parts of the Amazon rainforest.

Another major project, which has been promised by decree before April, is to build a highway, a hydroelectric plant and a bridge over the country’s largest river, in a well-preserved part of the Amazon rainforest.

It is an old proposal by retired General Maynard Santa Rosa, head of the Strategic Affairs Secretariat of the Presidency, who defends it mainly for reasons of national security.

The goal is to generate electricity for the middle reaches of the Amazon basin, where Manaos, a city of 2.1 million people, is located, and to promote local development to curb international environmental and indigenous organisations, the general wrote in a 2013 article.

A widespread paranoia among the Brazilian military is the alleged threat to national sovereignty posed by indigenous reservations and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), which they say could lead to a declaration of independence or to the “internationalisation” of parts of the Amazon rainforest.

President Jair Bolsonaro, a former army captain, warned of the dangers posed by the Triple A, an Andes-Amazon-Atlantic ecological corridor, although it is merely a proposal by the Colombian NGO Gaia Amazonas, as a way to protect nature in the far north of Brazil and parts of seven other countries that share the Amazon basin.

That was the reason, according to the president in office since January, that Brazil decided not to host the 25th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP25), which in the end will be held in Chile in January 2020.

Retired General Augusto Heleno Pereira, head of the Institutional Security Cabinet, with the rank of minister, has repeatedly mentioned the fear that Brazil will lose parts of the national territory if indigenous communities, especially groups with reservations along the border, join together with NGOs or international agencies to seek independence.

The new government is the most militarised in Brazilian history, including more army, navy and air force officers than in any other period, including the last military dictatorship.

In addition to eight ministers, there are more than 40 other high-level government officials who come from the military. And that presence is set to expand, since the ministers of Education, Ricardo Velez Rodriguez, and Environment, Ricardo Salles, are in favor of the militarisation of schools and of their ministries.

Rebuilt but unpaved portion of the BR-163 highway, in the Amazonian state of Pará, in northern Brazil. The government of Jair Bolsonaro wants to build a section of the road that was in the original design but was not even marked out in the middle of the Amazon rainforest. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

Military thinking, therefore, orients various sectors of the government. This is the case of the occupation of the Amazon rainforest by large infrastructure works. “Integrating in order not to hand over” the Amazon was the slogan of the dictatorship, which has been taken up again by the current administration.

In the energy sector, the nuclear option was implicit in the appointment of Admiral Albuquerque, as he was formerly the navy’s director general of nuclear and technological development.

He was in charge of a programme to build four conventional submarines, the first of which was launched in December, and a nuclear-powered submarine.

The navy developed a parallel nuclear programme, kept secret for several years, that succeeded in mastering uranium enrichment technology, even though Brazil had assumed international commitments to renounce any use of nuclear weapons.

Multiplying the number of nuclear power plants is part of the technological and strategic plans of the military that consider the advance of knowledge in that area essential.

In addition, Brazil has large uranium deposits and developed a nuclear fuel and equipment industry that would be boosted by the demand created by new power plants and submarines.

But there is a strong possibility of repeating the frustration of the programme initiated in the 1970s, due to similar financial difficulties. In the face of the foreign debt crisis of the 1980s, several mega-projects of the military dictatorship, labeled “pharaonic” by critics, were aborted.

Brazil acquired its first nuclear power plant in the United States, with a reactor from Westinghouse. It was named Angra 1 because it was installed 130 km west of Rio de Janeiro as the crow flies, on the edge of the sea, in the municipality of Angra dos Reis.

The works lasted from 1972 to 1982 and the plant began to operate in 1985, with a generating capacity of 657 megawatts.

Meanwhile, in 1975, the military government signed a nuclear cooperation agreement with Germany, which included the construction of eight other plants, with technology transfer.

Only the first of them, Angra 2, installed in the same small bay surrounded by mountains, finally began to operate – after a process that lacked transparency – in 2000, generating 1,650 megawatts.

The second German technology unit, Angra 3, began to be built in 1984, although work was interrupted two years later and only resumed between 2010 and 2015.

Reviving a project of astronomical costs sounds like an unlikely undertaking for a government that pledged to voters that it would carry out a fiscal adjustment, starting by reducing the deficit of the social security system.

Besides, the plant would be using outdated technology and equipment stored for more than three decades, all from Germany, which is dismantling its last nuclear plants.

Against the expansion of Brazil’s nuclear industry conspires the cost of its energy, much more expensive than hydropower, which is abundant in Brazil, and than solar and wind energy – alternatives sources whose cost is steadily dropping.

Above all, megaprojects have a track record that includes many failures.

The highway that General Santa Rosa wants to promote in the Amazon is precisely the northernmost and abandoned stretch of one of the mega-projects designed by the military dictatorship and whose construction began in the early 1970s.

BR-163 was supposed to cross the entire Brazilian territory from south to north, stretching a distance of 3,470 km. But construction came to a halt in Santarém, where the Tapajós River flows into the Amazon River. It was a white elephant for more than two decades, until the expansion of soybeans in the state of Mato Grosso made it useful again.

The idea of the new project is to complete it up to the Surinam border, but it is not economically justified. The stretch where the largest soybean production is transported to the ports for export is economically viable, but 90 km of that stretch are still not paved, which would require a large investment.

The government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2011), of the leftist Workers’ Party (PT), also unleashed a wave of mega-projects that largely failed, such as railways, ports, shipyards, refineries and petrochemical plants, and turned into corruption scandals.

Large hydroelectric plants were completed, but triggered protests from local populations, which tarnished their image. And that would likely be the reaction if the current government’s works in the Amazon continue to forge ahead, since they would cause damage to a number of indigenous and “quilombola” – Afro-descendant communities – territories.

The first of Argentina’s three existing nuclear plants, Atucha I, is located 100 km from Buenos Aires. China has offered to finance 85 percent of the 14 billion dollar cost of two other plants. Credit: CNEA

By Daniel Gutman
BUENOS AIRES, Jun 27 2017 (IPS)

Two new nuclear power plants, to cost 14 billion dollars, will give a new impetus to Argentina’s relation with atomic energy, which began over 60 years ago. President Mauricio Macri made the announcement from China, the country that is to finance 85 per cent of the works.

But besides the fact that social movements quickly started to organise against the plants, the project appears to face a major hurdle.

The Chinese government has set a condition: it threatens to pull out of the plans for the nuclear plants and from the rest of its investments in Argentina if the contract signed for the construction of two gigantic hydroelectric power plants in Argentina’s southernmost wilderness region, Patagonia, does not move forward. The plans are currently on hold, pending a Supreme Court decision.“China has an almost endless capacity for investment and is interested in Argentina as in the rest of Latin America, a region that it wants to secure as a provider of inputs. Of course China has a strong bargaining position and Argentina’s aim should be a balance of power.“ -- Dante Sica

Together with Brazil and Mexico, Argentina is one of the three Latin American countries that have developed nuclear energy.

The National Commission for Atomic Energy was founded in 1950 by then president Juan Domingo Perón (1946-1955 and 1973-1974) and the country inaugurated its first nuclear plant, Atucha I, in 1974. The development of nuclear energy was halted after the 1976-1983 military dictatorship, by then-president Raúl Alfonsín (1983-1989), but it was resumed during the administration of Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007).

According to the announcement Macri made during his visit to Beijing in May, construction of Atucha III, with a capacity of 745 MW, is to begin in January 2018, 100 km from the capital, in the town of Lima, within the province of Buenos Aires.

Atucha I and II, two of Argentina’s three nuclear power plants, are located in that area, while the third, known as Embalse, is in the central province of Córdoba.

Construction of a fifth nuclear plant, with a capacity of 1,150 MW, would begin in 2020 in an as-yet unannounced spot in the province of Río Negro, north of Patagonia.

Currently, nuclear energy represents four per cent of Argentina’s electric power, while thermal plants fired by natural gas and oil account for 64 per cent and hydroelectric power plants represent 30 per cent, according to the Energy Ministry. Other renewable sources only amount to two per cent, although the government is seeking to expand them.

Besides diversifying the energy mix, the projected nuclear and hydroelectric plants are part of an ambitious strategy that Argentina set in motion several years ago: to strengthen economic ties with China, which would buy more food from Argentina and boost investment here.

During his May 14-17 visit to China, Macri was enthusiastic about the role that the Asian giant could play in this South American country.

“China is an absolutely strategic partner. This will be the beginning of a wonderful era between our countries. There must be few countries in the world that complement each other than Argentina and China,” said Macri in Beijing, speaking to businesspeople from both countries.

During his May 14-17 visit to China, Argentina President Mauricio Macri announced the construction of two new nuclear power plants. Argentina, Brazil and Mexico are the three Latin American countries that use nuclear energy. Credit: Argentine Presidency

“Argentina produces food for 400 million people and we are aiming at doubling this figure in five to eight years,“ said Macri, who added that he expects from China investments in “roads, bridges, energy, ports, airports.“

Ties between Argentina and China began to grow more than 10 years ago and expanded sharply in 2014, when then president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (2007-2015) received her Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in Buenos Aires, where they signed several agreements.

These ranged from the construction of dams in Patagonia to investments in the upgrading of the Belgrano railway, which transports goods from the north of the country to the western river port of Rosario, where they are shipped to the Atlantic Ocean and overseas.

On Jun. 22, 18 new locomotives from China arrived in Buenos Aires for the Belgrano railroad.

However, relations between China and Argentina are not free of risks for this country, experts warn.

“China has an almost endless capacity for investment and is interested in Argentina as in the rest of Latin America, a region that it wants to secure as a provider of inputs. Of course China has a strong bargaining position and Argentina’s aim should be a balance of power,“ economist Dante Sica, who was secretary of trade and industry in 2002-2003, told IPS.

“They are buyers of food, but they also want to sell their products and they generate tension in Argentina´s industrial structure. In fact, our country for several years now has had a trade deficit with China,“ he added.

Roberto Adaro, an expert on international relations at the Centre for Studies in State Policies and Society, told IPS that “Argentina can benefit from its relations with China if it is clear with regard to its interests. It must insist on complementarity and not let China flood our local market with their products.“

Adaro praised the decision to invest in nuclear energy since it is “important to diversify the energy mix“ and because the construction of nuclear plants “also generates investments and jobs in other sectors of the economy.“

However, there is a thorn in the side of relations between China and Argentina regarding the nuclear issue: the project of the hydroelectric plants. These two giant plants with a projected capacity of 1,290 MW are to be built at a cost of nearly five billion dollar, on the Santa Cruz River, which emerges in the spectacular Glaciers National Park in the southern region of Patagonia, and flows into the Atlantic Ocean.

In December, when the works seemed about to get underway, the Supreme Court suspended construction of the dams, in response to a lawsuit filed by two environmental organisations.

The three Chinese state banks financing the two projects then said they would invoke a cross-default clause included in the contract for the dams, which said they would cancel the rest of their investments if the dams were not built.

To build the two plants, three Chinese and one Argentine companies formed a consortium, but after winning the tender in 2013, construction has not yet begun.

Under pressure from China, the government released the results of a new environmental impact study on Jun. 15 and now plans to convene a public hearing to discuss it, so that Argentina’s highest court will authorise the beginning of the works.

Added to opposition to the dams by environmentalists is their rejection of the nuclear plants. In the last few weeks, activists from Río Negro have held meetings in different parts of the province, demanding a referendum to allow the public to vote on the plant to be installed there.

They have even generated an unusual conflict with the neighbouring province of Chubut, where the regional parliament unanimously approved a statement against the nuclear plants. The governor of Río Negro, Alberto Weretilnek, asked the people of Chubut to “stop meddling.“

“Argentina must start a serious debate about what these plants mean, at a time when the world is abandoning this kind of energy. We need to know, among other things, how the uranium that is needed as fuel is going to be obtained,“ the director of the Environment and Natural Resources Foundation, Andrés Nápòli, told IPS.

Argentina now imports the uranium used in the country’s nuclear plants, but environmentalists are worried that local production, which was abandoned more than 20 years ago, will restart.

The blue and white Saltire flag of Scotland flutters next to the Union Jack during the 2014 Commonwealth Games. Credit: Vicky Brock/cc by 2.0

By Phil Harris
ROME, Sep 16 2014 (IPS)

After a two-year referendum campaign, Scots are finally voting Thursday on whether their country will regain its independence after more than 300 years of “marriage” with England.

It is still uncertain whether those in favour will win the day, but whichever way the wind blows, things are unlikely to be the same – and not just in terms of political relations between London and Edinburgh.If an independent Scotland were actually to abolish nuclear weapons from its territory, the government of what remains of today’s United Kingdom would be forced to look elsewhere for places in which to host its sea-based nuclear warheads – and this will be no easy task.

One bone of contention between Scots and their “cousins” to the south of Hadrian’s Wall – built by the Romans to protect their conquests in what is now England and, according to Emperor Hadrian’s biographer, “to separate the Romans from the barbarians” to the north – is the presence on Scottish territory of part of the United Kingdom’s nuclear arsenal.

The Scottish National Party (SNP), which supports an independent and non-nuclear Scotland, wants Scotland to become a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and the European Union, but rejects nuclear weapons.

The United Kingdom currently has four Vanguard class submarines armed with nuclear-tipped Trident missiles based at Gare Loch on the west coast of Scotland, ostensibly there for the purpose of deterrence – but that was back in the days of the Cold War.

If an independent Scotland were actually to abolish nuclear weapons from its territory, the government of what remains of today’s United Kingdom would be forced to look elsewhere for places in which to host its sea-based nuclear warheads – and this will be no easy task.

The search would be on for another deep-water port or ports, and the UK government has already said that other potential locations in England are unacceptable because they are too close to populated areas – although that has not stopped it from placing some of its nuclear submarines and their deadly cargo  not far from Glasgow since 1969.

In any case, if those in favour of Scottish independence win, just the possibility that Scotland might even begin to consider the abolition of nuclear arms would oblige the UK government to give the nature of its commitment to nuclear weapons a major rethink.

The same would be true even if those in favour of remaining part of the United Kingdom win because there would still be a not insignificant number of Scots against nuclear weapons.

Either scenario indicates that Scotland could come to play a significant role in discussions on nuclear disarmament although, clearly, this role would be all the more important as an independent nation participating in NATO, following in the footsteps of NATO member countries like Canada, Lithuania and Norway which do not allow nuclear weapons on their territory.

And what could come of NATO initiatives such as that taken at its summit in Wales earlier this month to create a new 4,000 strong rapid reaction force for initial deployment in the Baltics?

As Nobel Peace Laureate Maired Maguire has said, that “is a dangerous path for us all to be forced down, and could well lead to a third world war if not stopped. What is needed now are cool heads and people of wisdom and not more guns, more weapons, more war.”

An independent Scotland could raise its voice in favour of prohibiting nuclear weapons at the global level and add to the lobby against the threats posed by the irresponsible arms brandishing of NATO.

Representatives of the SNP have said that they are ready to take an active part in humanitarian initiatives on nuclear weapons and support negotiations on an international treaty to prohibit – and not just limit the proliferation of – nuclear weapons, even without the participation of states in possession of such weapons.

What justification would then remain for these states?

Meanwhile, as Scots go to vote in their independence referendum, there is another aspect of the nuclear issue that the UK government still has to come to terms with – nuclear energy.

Scotland used to be home to six nuclear power stations. Four were closed between 1990 and 2004, but two still remain – the Hunterston B power station in North Ayrshire and the Torness power station in East Lothian – both of which are run by EDF Energy, a company with its headquarters in London.

A YouGov public opinion poll in 2013 showed that Scots are twice as likely to favour wind power over nuclear or shale gas. Over six in 10 (62 percent) people in Scotland said they would support large-scale wind projects in their local area, well more than double the number who said they would be in favour of shale gas (24 percent) and almost twice as many as for nuclear facilities (32 percent).

Hydropower was the most popular energy source for large-scale projects in Scotland, with an overwhelming majority (80 percent) in favour.

So, with a strong current among Scots in favour of ‘non-nuclear’, whatever the outcome of Thursday’s referendum, London would be well-advised that the “barbarians” to its north could teach a lesson or two in a civilised approach to 21^st century coexistence.

Phil Harris is Chief, IPS World Desk (English service). He can be contacted at pharris@ips.org

View of the Angra 2 nuclear reactor, located in a “mousetrap” between the mountains and the sea. Credit: Fabíola Ortiz/IPS

By Fabíola Ortiz
ANGRA DOS REIS, Brazil , Dec 18 2013 (IPS)

Brazil has continued to develop nuclear energy despite the costs involved and the fact that the industry will never account for more than a small portion of the country’s energy production.

“The electric system needs thermal energy and this is the cleanest and safest kind,” Othon Luiz Pinheiro da Silva, the president of Eletrobras Eletronuclear, told IPS.

“It would be a mistake to rule it out,” added the head of the public enterprise in charge of building and running the nuclear power plants.

Three percent of Brazil’s electricity comes from thermonuclear energy. But Pinheiro da Silva himself says the nuclear power industry’s share should not grow much beyond four percent, because hydropower and other renewable sources will meet rising demand.

Angra dos Reis, in the Costa Verde region on the Atlantic coast 160 km west of Rio de Janeiro, was chosen as the site of the 640-MW Angra 1, Brazil’s first nuclear reactor, which began to operate in 1985 with U.S. technology.

The 1,350-MW Angra 2, the result of a technology transfer agreement with Germany, came onstream in 2001.

Brazil depends heavily on hydroelectricity, the cheapest way to generate energy.

Nuclear energy is “complementary,” the superintendent of Angra 2, Antônio Carlos Mazzaro, an engineer who has worked at the plant for 35 years, told IPS.

Angra 2 “generates 10.5 million MWh [megawatt-hours] per year, enough to meet one-third of the state of Rio de Janeiro’s demand, or to supply a population of five million people,” Mazzaro said.

Angra 3, which is being built at a cost of six billion dollars, is to begin operating in 2018. It employs 3,000 workers.

The constitution establishes a state monopoly over nuclear energy and the uranium cycle.

This country of nearly 200 million people launched its nuclear energy research programme in the 1950s. It has the world’s sixth-largest uranium reserves, 310,000 tons, although there are estimates that it could have up to 800,000 tons.

Brazil hopes to become an exporter of nuclear fuel, and had plans to build between four and eight new nuclear power plants by 2030. Studies have found 40 suitable possible sites for new reactors.

But the government had to back down after the March 2011 disaster at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan.

“The plan didn’t change; what changed was the speed with which it was going ahead,” Pinheiro da Silva said. “Governments had to respond to public opinion, and the immediate response in Brazil was to bring the projects to a halt in order to study them and take precautions.

“Although we are in a region much more suitable [than earthquake-prone] Fukushima and we are using more modern technology, we came up with a response plan, analysing all of our safety systems,” with an investment of 128 million dollars, he added.

But award-winning ecologist Vilmar Berna argues that the Costa Verde region was a bad choice.

Along that coastal area, mountains covered with forest abut the sea, leaving only enough room for a narrow stretch of beaches. The soil is fragile and landslides are frequent.

“The three power plants are in a veritable mousetrap, because on holidays, traffic jams already form on the only road out of there. Just think if the local population had to be evacuated,” Berna remarked to IPS.

The attempt to develop the region, which depends above all on tourism, was also misguided, he said.

When Angra 1 was built, more than 5,000 workers came to the area. Once the construction work was completed, they and their families ended up expanding the population of the local favelas or slums, Berna pointed out.

The decision to develop a nuclear industry was taken by the 1964-1985 military dictatorship.

“Protesting against nuclear energy was like protesting against the government, which meant prison, torture or death,” Berna said. “But today, in democracy, this issue should be decided in a plebiscite.”

In January, the National Nuclear Energy Commission sought public input on a draft law to establish the rules and requirements for approving the locations of the new reactors.

But both Berna and political analyst Clóvis Brigagão say the industry continues to be cloaked in secrecy.

The Brazilian people have never been given the right to choose whether or not they want nuclear energy, Berna said.

Another problem is that the salt water used to cool down the reactors is four degrees hotter when it is dumped back into the ocean, Berna said.

In 2011, the National Environment Council ruled that the water should not be more than three degrees warmer than the temperature of the ocean, and should never be over 40 degrees Celsius.

Eletronuclear responded to IPS that since the 1980s it has measured the temperature every 15 days at two different spots where the effluent flows into the Atlantic.

In the last few years, “the temperature of the sea water dumped into the ocean at the Saco Piraquara de Fora inlet has never been higher than the 40 degrees stipulated by the resolution,” says a statement sent to IPS.

Another question of concern to environmentalists is the disposal of radioactive waste.

According to the company, the low-level radioactive waste is stored in installations at the Itaorna Complex, where the Angra plants are located. And the highly radioactive waste, such as spent nuclear fuel, is inside the reactors.

On Dec. 2, the courts ordered the government, the National Nuclear Energy Commission and Eletronuclear to factor into the budget the necessary funds to plan, build and install facilities for the permanent disposal of Angra´s radioactive waste.

The court verdict was in response to legal action brought by the public prosecutor’s office in 2007 after a civil lawsuit was filed to protest the storage of hazardous waste in temporary installations since the 1980s, which posed a risk to public health.

The administration of President Barack Obama should put more emphasis on diplomacy in its quest for a satisfactory resolution of Iran’s nuclear programme, according to a major new report released by The Iran Project.

Endorsed by nearly three dozen former top U.S. diplomatic, military, and intelligence officials, the report calls for Washington to “rebalance” its dual-track policy toward Tehran by strengthening the diplomatic track to take advantage of the pressure it has exerted on Tehran through ever-stricter sanctions and threats of military action.

“Much has been accomplished through pressure, but the results have fallen short of expectations in several ways, and unintended consequences pose risks,” according to the report, the latest in a series by The Iran Project and the first to make specific policy reccomendations designed to both defuse persistent tensions over Tehran’s nuclear programme and lay the groundwork for a broader dialogue between the two countries.

Previous reports have focused instead on the costs and benefits of sanctions and military action against Iran.

The pressure track, the new, 84-page report argues, may have weakened Iran’s economy and slowed the expansion of its nuclear programme, but it has not produced any breakthrough nor markedly reduced Tehran’s regional influence.

Moreover, the pressure track may also have hardened Tehran’s resistance to pressure, contributed to a rise in repression in Iran, and compounded sectarian tensions across the volatile Middle East, according to the report.

It was signed by, among other prominent foreign-policy figures, former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski; the former Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Richard Lugar; and one of the most highly decorated diplomats of his generation, former Amb. Thomas Pickering, a core member of The Iran Project.

“A strengthened diplomatic track that includes the promise of sanctions relief in exchange for verifiable (Iranian) cooperation could help to end the standoff and produce a nuclear deal,” the report asserts.

The report comes amidst uncertainty about the future of negotiations over Iran’s nuclear programme between Tehran and the “P5+1”, the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany. In the latest round of talks in Almaty, Kazakhstan, earlier this month, it appears that neither side moved off its previous position, and no date for new high-level talks has been set.

Nonetheless, all parties said the discussions were more detailed and substantive than in past meetings and stressed that there had been no breakdown in the process. Most analysts believe that little or no progress can be expected until after the presidential elections in Iran Jun. 14.

The lack of apparent progress – coupled with the installation of more and more sophisticated centrifuges by Iran at uranium enrichment facilities at Natanz and Fordo – has encouraged the Israel lobby on Capitol Hill, notably the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the Foundation for the Defence of Democracies (FDD), to press Congress for new sanctions against Iran and foreign companies that do business with it that, if approved and fully enforced, would amount to a de facto trade embargo against the Islamic Republic.

A key Senate committee Tuesday approved a resolution calling on Obama to more strictly enforce existing sanctions and to provide military and other support to Israel if the Jewish state “is compelled to take military action in self-defense”.

The new report, “Strategic Options for Iran: Balancing Pressure With Diplomacy,” also comes amidst a spate of other studies by influential mainstream think tanks that have argued for greater flexibility by the administration in its dealings with Iran.

Just last week, an Atlantic Council task force, which Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel co-chaired until he was nominated to his new post, released a report that called for Washington to “make a more concerted effort to keep Iran from getting to keep Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, while lessening the chances for war through reinvigorated diplomacy that offers Iran a realistic and face-saving way out of the nuclear standoff.”

While it concluded that Washington should retain the option to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities to prevent it from acquiring a weapon, it also warned that ramifications of a “premature military strike …could also be dire.”

Similarly, a new book co-authored by a former top Gulf expert in the Reagan administration, Geoffrey Kemp of the Center for the National Interest, and based on months of consultations with elite national-security experts recommended a “more aggressive U.S. strategy. …(A)llowing very limited and closely monitored (uranium) enrichment within Iran is far preferable to war, and is less risky,” according to the book.

Meanwhile, another recent report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace warned that, “Economic pressure or military force cannot ‘end’ Iran’s nuclear program. …The only sustainable solution for assuring that Iran’s nuclear program remains purely peaceful is a mutually agreeable diplomatic solution.”

This emerging elite – if not Congressional – consensus will be bolstered by The Iran Project’s report which insists that “no change in U.S. policy will be possible unless President Obama makes the negotiation of a nuclear deal with Iran one of his top priorities.”

The report stresses that any direct talks – which the administration in recent months appears to have endorsed – should complement the efforts of the P5+1 and that emphasising the diplomatic track would not mean abandoning the pressure track, “including maintaining the option of using military force should the Iranians move quickly to build a bomb.”

“Yet the more the President threatens the use of force, the more difficult it will be for Iran’s defiant leadership to consider any offer, and the more the President will be under pressure to use military force,” it warned.

The report defines a minimum nuclear deal as including Iran’s agreement to produce only low-enriched uranium (3.5-5 percent); cease its production of 20-percent enriched uranium; reduce its existing stockpiles of enriched uranium; and forswear production of plutonium – all under a strict monitoring regime by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

In return, Washington and its P5+1 partners would offer some sanctions relief (although the report notes that Obama’s flexibility to roll back U.S. sanctions is limited by Congress); a commitment not to impose new sanctions for a period of time; and formal recognition of Iran’s limited enrichment programme.

If such a minimum agreement can be reached, according to the report, Washington should broaden talks with Tehran to explore opportunities for cooperation, notably on Afghanistan and Iraq, drug trafficking, and even Syria, although that would be substantially more ambitious.

While the administration has called for direct talks with Tehran’s to clarify its position on the nuclear programme, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has expressed strong scepticism about their usefulness so long as Washington is “holding a gun against Iran”.

At the same time, he has not ruled out such talks – previously a taboo subject in Tehran that has now become a major subject of public debate.

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

A billboard in Yilan County, Taiwan asks voters to not let Yilan become another Fukushima. Credit: Dennis Engbarth/IPS

By Stephen Leahy
UXBRIDGE, Canada, Mar 12 2013 (IPS)

Two years after Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, the country faces 100 to 250 billion dollars in cleanup and compensation costs, tens of thousands of displaced people and widespread impacts of radiation.

The nuclear industry and its suppliers made billions from building and operating Fukushima’s six reactors, but it is the Japanese government and its citizens who are stuck with all the costly “fallout” of the disaster.The laws in Canada and Japan are designed to protect the nuclear companies, not the people living near their reactors.

“People’s lives were destroyed and we will be paying trillions of yen in tax money because of the Fukushima disaster,” said Hisayo Takada, an energy campaigner with Greenpeace Japan.

“The nuclear industry, other than Tepco (Tokyo Electric Power Co), has paid nothing as they are specially protected by the law,” Takada told IPS.

On Mar. 11, 2011, Japan experienced a 9.0 magnitude earthquake and resulting tsunami that badly damaged Tepco’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Three of six reactors suffered a meltdown, and reactor unit four was damaged. The Fukushima accident has been rated at the highest level (7) of the International Atomic Energy Agency scale, the same as the Chernobyl accident.

A year after the disaster, Tepco was taken over by the Japanese government because it couldn’t afford the costs to get the damaged reactors under control. By June of 2012, Tepco had received nearly 50 billion dollars from the government.

The six reactors were designed by the U.S. company General Electric (GE). GE supplied the actual reactors for units one, two and six, while two Japanese companies Toshiba provided units three and five, and Hitachi unit four. These companies as well as other suppliers are exempted from liability or costs under Japanese law.

Many of them, including GE, Toshiba and Hitachi, are actually making money on the disaster by being involved in the decontamination and decommissioning, according to a report by Greenpeace International.

“The nuclear industry and governments have designed a nuclear liability system that protects the industry, and forces people to pick up the bill for its mistakes and disasters,” says the report, “Fukushima Fallout“.

“If nuclear power is as safe as the industry always claims, then why do they insist on liability limits and exemptions?” asked Shawn-Patrick Stensil, a nuclear analyst with Greenpeace Canada.

Nuclear plant owner/operators in many countries have liability caps on how much they would be forced to pay in case of an accident. In Canada, this liability cap is only 75 million dollars. In the United Kingdom, it is 220 million dollars. In the U.S., each reactor owner puts around 100 million dollars into a no-fault insurance pool. This pool is worth about 10 billion dollars.

“Suppliers are indemnified even if they are negligent,” Stensil told IPS.

Japanese nuclear operators are required to carry 1.5 billion dollars in insurance – not nearly enough for the estimated 100 to 250 billion dollars in decommissioning and liability costs for Fukushima. Suppliers like GE are explicitly exempt from any liability, even if defects in their equipment contributed to the disaster.

“The laws in Canada and Japan are designed to protect the nuclear companies, not the people living near their reactors,” Stensil said.

Radiation levels around Fukushima reactors are still high, too high for humans to work near in some places. The World Health Organisation has warned that one-third of workers face increased risks of cancer. Robots have failed and remote cameras cannot reveal the state of the damaged nuclear fuel. The fuel is still hot and requires massive amounts of water to cool, but the plant is running out of storage space for the radioactive water.

Tepco management acknowledges removal of the 11,000 radioactive fuel assemblies won’t begin until 2021. Decommissioning of the entire plant will take at least 40 years.

“We warned that Japan’s nuclear power plants could be subjected to much stronger earthquakes and much bigger tsunamis than they were designed to withstand,” said Philip White of the Citizens’ Nuclear Information Centre, an NGO based in Tokyo.

“Shockingly, this danger of tsunami-caused meltdowns had been publicised since 2008 in documents issued by the Japan Nuclear Energy Safety Organization, but plant owners effectively ignored this contingency,” said Alexander Likhotal, president of Green Cross International.

“It was the failure of human action to take the proper safety precautions against known, highly possible, natural threats that resulted in such a disaster,” Likhotal said in a statement.

Earthquakes are common in Japan, with nearly 2,500 quakes in the past two years. After Fukushima, all 50 of Japan’s nuclear reactors, supplying 30 percent of all electricity, were shut down. Only two have been restarted.

In the months that followed the disaster, the Japanese government launched an ambitious renewable energy programme and phased out nuclear power. About 3.6 gigawatts of solar, wind and geothermal have been approved so far. The goal is 35 percent renewable energy by 2030.

But with the recent election of conservative Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government, nuclear power is back in favour. Nuclear plant operators who promise to make safety improvements such as airplane crash-resistant, waterproof containment and second control rooms will be allowed to resume operation.

“I don’t think this is logical to do it this way,” said Greenpeace Japan’s Takada.

Despite an agreement between Iran and the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany (P5+1) to resume long-delayed talks about Tehran’s nuclear programme in Kazakhstan at the end of this month, few observers here believe that any breakthrough is in the offing.

That belief was reinforced Thursday when Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei appeared to reject a U.S. proposal, most recently put forward by Vice President Joseph Biden at a major security conference in Munich last week, to hold direct bilateral talks.

While Iran’s foreign minister, Ali Akhbar Salehi, initially welcomed the offer, provided Washington desisted from its “threatening rhetoric that (all options are) on the table,” Khamenei said in a speech to air force officers Thursday that such talks “would solve nothing”.

“You are pointing a gun at Iran saying you want to talk,” he said. “The Iranian nation will not be frightened by the threats.”

His rebuff confirmed to some observers here that serious negotiations – whether between Iran and the P5 (the U.S., Britain, France, Russia, and China) plus German or in bilateral talks between Tehran and Washington – are unlikely to take place before Iran’s presidential election in June.

“(I)t simply doesn’t lie in (Khamenei’s) nature to agree to talks from a position of weakness – and certainly not without the protection of having the talks be conducted by an Iranian President who he can …blame for any potential failure in the talks,” wrote Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), on the ‘Daily Beast’ website Thursday.

“Khamenei would rather wait till after the Iranian elections, it seems, in order to both find ways to shift the momentum back to Iran’s side and to hide behind Iran’s new President in the talks,” according to Parsi, author of two award-winning books on U.S.-Iranian relations.

He was referring to the widespread notion here that the cumulative impact of U.S.-led international economic sanctions against Iran, as well as the raging civil war in Syria, Iran’s closest regional ally, has seriously weakened Tehran and “forced” it back to the table, if not quite yet to make the concessions long demanded by the administration of President Barack Obama and its allies.

Those include ending Tehran’s enrichment of uranium to 20 percent; shipping its existing 20-percent enriched stockpile out of the country; closure of its underground Fordow enrichment facility; acceptance of a highly intrusive inspections regime by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); and the clearing up of all outstanding IAEA questions related to possible past military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear programme.

In exchange for those steps, according to U.S. officials, Washington – and presumably the other P5+1 members — would be prepared to forgo further UN. sanctions against Iran; assure the supply of nuclear fuel for Tehran’s Research Reactor (TRR), which produces medical isotopes; facilitate services to Iran’s aging civilian aircraft fleet; and provide other “targeted sanctions relief” that, however, would not include oil- and banking-related sanctions that have been particularly damaging to Iran’s economy over the past two years.

Gradual relief from those more-important sanctions would follow only after full and verifiable implementation of Iran’s side of the bargain.

Until such a deal is struck, however, Washington is committed to increasing the pressure, according to U.S. officials who say the administration remains committed to a strategy of preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon by military means, if necessary.

Indeed, in what one official described as “a significant turning of the screw”, the administration announced Wednesday that it had begun implementing new Congressionally mandated sanctions that would effectively force Iran’s foreign oil purchasers into barter arrangements. To avoid sanctions, buyers would have to pay into local accounts from which Iran could then buy locally made goods.

It’s generally accepted that such so-called “crippling sanctions” are responsible, at least in substantial part, for the 50-percent decline in the value of the riyal, galloping inflation, and a major increase in unemployment in recent months.

At the same time, however, there is growing doubt here that the sanctions are achieving their purpose – forcing Iran to accept the stringent curbs on its nuclear programme demanded by the U.S. – or that they are likely to achieve that purpose within the next 18-24 months.

That is the time frame in which most experts believe Tehran could achieve “breakout capacity” – the ability to be able to build a nuclear bomb very quickly – if it decided to do so.

Indeed, in recent weeks, Iran began installing advanced centrifuges at the Natanz nuclear facility that, if fully activated, could significantly accelerate the rate of enrichment. The move was seen as an effort by Tehran to strengthen its position before the P5+1 meeting in Almaty Feb. 26.

Moreover, the assumption that the economic woes imposed by the sanctions would drive such a deep wedge between Tehran’s leadership and the population that the regime risked collapse is also increasingly in question.

While a majority (56 percent) of respondents said in December that sanctions have hurt Iranians’ livelihoods “a great deal”, according to a poll of Iranian opinion released by the Gallup organisation here Thursday, 63 percent said they believed Iran should continue developing its nuclear programme. Only 17 percent disagreed.

When asked who should be blamed for the sanctions, only 10 percent of respondents cited Iran itself; 70 percent named either the U.S. (47 percent), Israel (nine percent); Western European countries (seven percent); or the U.N. (seven percent).

“This may indicate that sanctions alone are not having the intended effect of persuading Iranian residents and country leaders to change their stance on the level of international oversight of their nuclear program,” noted a Gallup analysis of the results.

Its credibility, however, was questioned by some Iran experts who noted that increased security measures taken by the regime may affect the willingness of respondents to speak frankly to pollsters.

In light of the most recent developments, including Khamenei’s rejection of Biden’s offer and the installation of the new centrifuges at Natanz, Iran hawks here are urging yet tougher sanctions and moves to make the eventual use of force more credible – appeals that are certain to be greatly amplified next month when the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) holds its annual convention here

At the same time, however, there appears to be a growing conviction within the foreign-policy elite that ever-increasing sanctions and threatening military action are unlikely to work, and that Washington should offer be more forthcoming about sanctions relief to get a deal.

Indeed, the administration’s commitment to resorting to military action, if necessary, to prevent Iran from obtaining a weapon is also increasingly being questioned, as a growing number of foreign-policy “greybeards” are calling for a strategy of “deterrence” if and when Iran reaches breakout capacity.

“In the end, war is too costly, unpredictable and dangerous to be a practical option,” noted Bruce Riedel, a former top CIA Middle East and South Asia analyst who was in charge of preparing Afghanistan policy on Obama’s transition team in 2009 and remains close to the White House from his perch at the Brookings Institution.

The “stark choice” between a diplomatic solution and war that Obama’s commitment to prevention has created, he wrote to the “Iran Primer” this week, “is a mistake”.

“But there is a good chance that (Secretary of State John) Kerry and Obama will bail themselves out of this trap by re-opening the door to containment, although they would probably call it something else.”

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

By Peter Custers
Jan 28 2013 (IPS)

Few critical questions have been raised so far by Bangladesh’s intellectual community over the deal towards construction of two nuclear power plants in Rooppur, 180km from capital Dhaka.

Yet, questions do need to be posed. On Nov. 2 last year, Russia and Bangladesh signed the long awaited nuclear power agreement on the supply of two 1000 Megawatt reactors. Significantly, the deal was closely followed up by a major defence deal worth a billion dollars for delivery of armoured vehicles, transport helicopters and other weaponry.

This last deal was sealed during Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s recent Moscow visit. The given pattern – of a deal facilitating the purchase and transfer of nuclear technology paving the way for enlarged armament transfers – is broadly similar to the pattern set by the U.S. and India when they signed their framework agreement on nuclear cooperation in 2008.

Here, an expansion in U.S. exports of armaments to India was the hidden, reverse side of the nuclear deal. And while ostensibly there is no direct link between the two types of trade, both the U.S. and Russia evidently are equally eager to enlarge both their sales of nuclear technology and of weaponry towards countries of the South. But whether the Rooppur deal and the sequential defence deal – both involving huge sums of public money – are really in the interests of Bangladesh needs to be scrutinised.

Bangladesh’s nuclear lobby undoubtedly will have celebrated the Rooppur deal as a grand success. After all the dream to provide Bangladesh with nuclear energy is longstanding, dating from the time Bangladesh was a part of Pakistan before 1971.

Few details on the content of the nuclear agreement have been revealed to Bangladesh’s public. From the ‘self-evaluation report’ submitted by Bangladesh to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in the middle of 2012, however, it appears that the two nuclear reactors to be supplied by Russia to Bangladesh will be of VVER-1000 design.

This is a water-cooled and water-moderated reactor reportedly devised in the late 1970s. Towards the cooling of the nuclear fuel rods, water is pumped into the primary circuit of the reactor and kept under constant pressure to prevent it from reaching boiling point.

After its use in the reactor complex, the (polluted) water needs to be released, i.e. dumped back onto the environment. This immediately raises the question as to the consequences of Rooppur for the fisherfolk in Ishwardi, the sub-district of Pabna where Rooppur is located. Will biodiversity in the reactor’s surrounding water bodies be affected?

Further pertinent questions arise once we try to envision how Rooppur’s nuclear fuel rods will be supplied and disposed of. To some extent the arrangements chosen imply that Bangladesh’s own population will not be burdened with the damaging consequences of the nuclear waste that is generated in the nuclear production chain.

Neither, it is implied, will massive amounts of low-level waste be dumped in the country in consequence of uranium mining. Nor would the country’s landscape or subsoil be disfigured due to the presence of storage tanks containing long-lasting, high-level fluid waste from nuclear reprocessing.

Will this suffice to allay the public’s fears? Under the agreement signed between Russia and Bangladesh, Bangladesh will not itself enrich uranium. Russia will both supply the fuel elements for the reactors, and will take back the highly radioactive rods once they have completed their ‘life-cycle’.

However, this does not mean that the people of Ishwardi and Pabna can rest reassured. Central issues to be looked into here are the temporary storage of the radioactive fuel rods after the end of their usage and the transportation of the fuel rods to and from the Rooppur nuclear complex. In Europe the transportation by road of used fuel elements has for many years aroused fierce resistance from anti-nuclear activists.

Thirdly, there is the question of reactor safety from a nuclear catastrophe. Russian officials will surely argue that the VVER-1000 design has proven to be more secure than the design of the granite-moderated reactor in Chernobyl, Ukraine, where the world’s most catastrophic nuclear accident ever took place in 1986.

Surely, it is the last-mentioned RBMK design which has burdened the Russian state and people with nightmarish problems – of hundreds of thousands of cancer deaths and of a vast contaminated region where agricultural production had to be suspended. Yet the so-called ‘stress tests’ undertaken in Russia in 2011 subsequent to the Fukushima disaster in Japan have laid bare numerous basic defects that Russian reactors share with those in Japan.

A joint report brought out by Rosatom and other Russian state institutions in the middle of 2011, for instance, questioned the capability of the country’s reactors to remain safe if cooling systems collapse, and there reportedly is no guarantee that power backup systems will be effective in case of a cooling system failure.

The official report also described how spent fuel is simply allowed to accrue in onsite storage sites because of lack of space. One wonders whether scientists belonging to Bangladesh’s nuclear establishment have reviewed this report by Russia’s state agencies. And whether their own worries have been dispelled.

The country would do well to take notice of the huge international controversy surrounding nuclear energy today. In neighbouring India, for instance, there has emerged an informed debate, which is of immediate relevance for Bangladesh. Coincidentally the strongest opposition against nuclear construction has been built in the area surrounding Koodankulam in Tamil Nadu precisely in opposition to a VVER-reactor supplied by the Russian Federation.

Being densely populated and subject to annual river flooding, Bangladesh can ill afford to take risks. Hence, any construction works in Rooppur should be preceded by an informed public debate in which both the country’s progressive intellectuals, the new generation of urban activists, and Pabna’s peasants and fisher folk take part.

Excerpt:

France's energy mix includes solar panels at a fuel station. Credit: A. D. McKenzie/IPS

By A. D. McKenzie
PARIS, May 14 2012 (IPS)

As France’s president-elect Francois Hollande prepares to form a new government, many environmentalists are calling for the appointment of an ecology minister with real power who can deliver on promises to reduce the use of nuclear power as well as cut carbon emissions.

“We want a strong minister – one that will have energy as part of his portfolio,” said Marc Mossalgue, a spokesman for Climate Action Network France (RAC-F), which groups non-governmental organisations concerned with climate change and environmental protection.

Mossalgue told IPS in an interview that NGOs want to see a “clear mandate” so that the ecology minister won’t be overshadowed by his counterparts in the industry and economy sectors.

“The challenges demand … that the future minister also be able to address housing, transportation and energy issues to be effective.” Mossalgue said ahead of Hollande’s inauguration on Tuesday.

The former ecology minister, Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, had limited authority in the administration of president Nicolas Sarkozy, who Hollande defeated in runoff elections on May 6. Decisions on energy then were largely in the realm of the Industry Ministry, which often had the final say, according to political observers.

“Kosciusko-Morizet was never able to live up to her own convictions. She chose the wrong side, and too bad for her,” said Joël Vormus, energy and environment project manager for the Comité de Liaison Energies Renouvelables (CLER), a non-governmental network of more than 200 professionals throughout France.

“The first promise we want to see Hollande keep is the holding of a public debate on the future of energy policies in France,” he told IPS. “It was never subjected to public debate and all NGOs are waiting for this to happen.”

Hollande, a socialist, says he will close France’s oldest nuclear plant, the two-reactor, 35-year-old plant at Fessenheim in north-eastern France; but that wouldn’t be until the end of his first term in 2017.

He also proposes to cut the amount of electricity generated from nuclear power in France to 50 percent from the current 75 percent, by 2030. This would mean closing half of the country’s 58 reactors.

Alongside these goals, Hollande has also said he wants to cut carbon emissions by 30 percent by 2020, which would be 10 percent higher than the European agreed objective.

“This is an ambitious goal, but it’s not unrealistic,” Vormus told IPS.

Other energy experts do not expect much to change in the short-term, however, because of the huge costs involved in moving to renewables and the spectre of higher electricity bills for consumers amid the present economic crisis.

“Over the next five years we wouldn’t expect to see very much change,” says Dr. Roy Cameron, head of the nuclear development division in the Nuclear Energy Agency of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

“Nuclear will continue to be a very significant contributor in the energy mix,” he told IPS. “In terms of basic issues of the interaction of nuclear and renewables, countries like France have to work out how capable they are of dealing with the increased costs that will come from any move to renewables and whether they are ready to impose hikes in electricity prices as is happening in Germany, for instance.”

The French Electricity Union (UFE) released a report last November saying that cutting nuclear energy use to 50 percent would necessitate an extra 60 billion euros in investments to meet projected electricity demand, and would increase carbon emissions by around 30 percent and cause electricity prices to rise by some 50 percent.

NGOs measure the monetary costs against the “grave and irreversible consequences for man and the environment” that could come from one accident at a nuclear plant, to use the words of Kosciusko-Morizet following the Fukushima disaster in Japan last year.

“That’s obviously an argument that can be made, but the accident in the world that’s killed the most people has been a dam collapse and not a nuclear plant,” said Cameron, referring to a 1975 dam burst in China in which an estimated 30,000 people perished and thousands more died in resulting epidemics.

“On any comparative basis … the health impacts are always much lower in nuclear than in other technologies,” he added. “That’s without dismissing the real costs related to relocation, loss of income or other issues in a nuclear accident.”

Cameron said that OECD studies have shown that governments and consumers are most concerned about “security of supply” when it comes to providing energy.

“Citizens are not happy if they turn on the light and it doesn’t come on or if they put on the shower and it’s cold water,” he told IPS. “Security of supply is often the issue we’ve found in our studies that motivates governments more. Climate change policy is secondary to security of supply.”

He said that the new French government will have to decide how much it can “take on board a climate change goal without affecting security of supply while ensuring affordability.”

Even if Fessenheim does close, Hollande has already agreed to the completion of a controversial third- generation reactor being built at the Flamanville Nuclear Power Plant in northwestern France, and he hasn’t indicated where he stands on the construction of another reactor at Penly.

The Flamanville 3 EPR (European Pressurised Reactor) will have greater power-generating capacity than Fessenheim, which means the country’s nuclear status quo will be kept for some time, analysts say.

“The number of reactors will stay the same for now,” says Pierre Terzian, editor and publisher of Petrostrategies, an international energy newsletter. “But Hollande will definitely invest more in renewables, probably encourage energy efficiency and probably not authorise the building of new nuclear plants.” (END)

As the showdown over Iranian nuclear ambitions intensifies, political analysts in Azerbaijan are urging the government to deepen the country’s ties with Israeli and Western security structures.

Officials in Baku have not commented on how Azerbaijan intends to respond to the rising global tension connected to the Iranian nuclear issue. But a series of arrests suggests President Ilham Aliyev’s administration is cracking down on sources of perceived Iranian influence in Azerbaijan.

Long an anomaly in the Muslim world, Israeli-Azerbaijani ties run the gamut from telecommunications investments to sales of military technology and equipment and oil. On Feb. 11, those ties acquired a new public dimension with a Times of London article that claimed that Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, has a substantial presence in Azerbaijan to gather intelligence about Iran.

Tehran took matters a step further and claimed that Mossad operatives in Azerbaijan allegedly worked out plans to assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists – a claim Baku angrily denounced on Feb. 13 as “a lie, fabrication and libel”. Tehran seemed to raise the stakes on Feb. 21, when Baku announced that an Iranian helicopter had violated Azerbaijani airspace at the border town of Astara, the Turan news agency reported.

Such incidents should not intimidate Azerbaijan into backing away from Israel, said Vafa Guluzade, a former presidential foreign policy aide.

“Baku should cooperate with Western powers to reveal Iranian intelligence networks when their activity really harms Azerbaijan’s security,” asserted Guluzade, who worked during the early post-Soviet era for former presidents Ayaz Mütalibov, Abulfaz Elchibey and Heydar Aliyev.

Iran, a country with which Azerbaijan shares deep cultural and historical ties, is routinely suspected of attempting to stir up trouble in Baku – either via protests by the country’s practicing Shi’a Muslims, or through more violent steps such as an alleged recent assassination plot against Israeli Ambassador to Baku Michael Lotem.

Guluzade characterised Tehran’s uproar over the Times article as part of that same supposed trend, an alleged attempt “to pressure Baku and restrict its cooperation with Israel”.

One former deputy minister of national security echoed the call for closer ties with Western intelligence operations, arguing that Azerbaijani law-enforcement agencies are not capable on their own of thwarting suspected Iranian activities.

“I would welcome deeper cooperation (by Azerbaijani law enforcement) with their colleagues from the United States, Turkey and other countries,” said Sulhaddin Akper, director of the Baku-based Center for Euro-Atlantic Cooperation.

Alper conceded that “(o)f course, both Israeli and Iranian intelligence services are active in Azerbaijan,” and predicted that “this activity will increase further, taking into consideration the situation in the region.” At the same time, he scoffed that the notion that Azerbaijan would cooperate with Mossad to target Iranian nuclear scientists, saying such action would be “against our national interests”.

Elhan Shahinoglu, director of the Atlas research center, agreed, adding that, aside from intensifying alleged ongoing cooperation “with U.S., Turkish and Israeli intelligence agencies,” Baku should also increase its cooperation with the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.

On Feb. 15, a few days after the Iranian protest note, President Ilham Aliyev visited NATO headquarters in Brussels, where he expressed interest in making long-term financial contributions to the Afghan National Army Trust Fund, and emphasised Azerbaijan’s provision of over-flights, troops, cargo transit and mine-clearing for the alliance’s campaign in Afghanistan. Details about the size of any potential fund contributions were not released.

Meanwhile, Baku appears to be taking on its own what might be termed “preventive measures” against Iran.

In the suburban village of Nardaran, a Baku suburb known for its Islamic conservatism, police over the past four days have arrested more than 15 people, including Niazi Kerimov, brother of Natig Kerimov, a member of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Party of Azerbaijan. Government officials have long alleged that the party, banned since 1996, receives Iranian funding. The group is the only political entity in Azerbaijan to have denounced Baku’s ties with Israel.

No reason has been given for the arrests, nor has the government body responsible for the arrests been identified, Turan reported. In a Feb. 20 statement, the Islamic Party called the arrests “politically motivated”.

Other high-profile arrests include a prominent theologian, Haji Akhund Ilham, the mullah of a mosque in Bina, outside Baku, and a scholar educated at an Iranian seminary, Turan reported. The Ministry of National Security declined to comment on Ilham’s Feb. 17 arrest.

Also on Feb. 17, Baku police detained Anar Bayramly, a local freelance correspondent for Iranian broadcast media, including the satellite news channel Sahar. Bayramly was charged him with heroin possession and resisting police.

Bayramly’s brother, Eldar, has denied the allegations of drug possession, and told Turan that his brother had been repeatedly summoned to a local police station over the past few weeks and questioned about his political views. Bayramly’s lawyer, Anar Gasimli, told EurasiaNet.org that he has not yet been able to meet with his client, or with state investigators. He added that he had no official information about the charges against the journalist.

The Iranian Embassy in Baku has denounced the arrest and warned that it could damage relations with Tehran. But Azerbaijan, wedged between Iran to the south, Russia to the north and a hostile Armenia to the west, long ago learned to play its diplomatic cards carefully.

While criticising Iran for its alleged “anti-Azerbaijani activity”, Parliamentary Speaker Ogtay Asadov on Feb. 14 underlined that Azerbaijan would never allow its territory to be used against Iran. The pledge, often made by President Aliyev as well, is a familiar one.

“There is no reason why this position should change,” said Shahinoglu, the political analyst.

*This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

By Gareth Porter
WASHINGTON, Feb 23 2012 (IPS)

The failure of a mission by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to get Iranian permission to visit a military testing site mentioned in its latest report has been interpreted in media coverage as a stall to avoid the discovery of confirming evidence of past work on nuclear weapons.

But the history of Iranian cooperation with the IAEA on carrying out inspections at the Parchin military testing centre, as well as a previous IAEA-Iran work programme agreement, suggests that Iran is keeping permission for such a visit as bargaining leverage to negotiate a better deal with the agency.

The IAEA statement Wednesday emphasised the fact that the mission to Tehran had been denied permission to visit the site at Parchin. That prompted Associated Press correspondent in Vienna George Jahn to call Iran’s refusal to agree to an IAEA visit to Parchin “stonewalling” and evidence of “hard line resistance” to international pressure on its nuclear programme.

IAEA headquarters in Vienna, Austria. Credit: Sarajevo-x.com/publix domain

International Herald Tribune blogger Harvey Morris wrote that Iran’s strategy was to “play for time”.

But access to Parchin was discussed as part of broader negotiations on what the IAEA statement called a “document facilitating the clarification of unresolved issues” in regard to “possible military dimensions” of Iran’s nuclear program. The negotiations were focused on what cooperation the IAEA is demanding and what the agency is ready to offer in return for that cooperation.

Judging from past negotiations between Iran and the IAEA, Iran is ready to offer access to Parchin as well as other sites requested by the agency as part of an agreement under which the IAEA would stop accusing Iran of carrying out covert nuclear weapons experiments.

The IAEA’s position in the negotiations was revealed by the AP’s Jahn, who reported that the agency mission had hoped to get Iranian agreement to meetings with “scientists suspected of working on the alleged weapons program” and to “inspect documents related to nuclear weapons work”.

The September 2008 IAEA report said the agency had “proposed discussions with Iranian experts on the contents of the engineering reports (on the Shahab-3 missile) examining in detail modeling studies….”

Iran has rejected such demands as threatening its legitimate national security interests, in violation of the IAEA statute.

The scientists that the agency is demanding to see are publicly known officials of Iran’s military research institutions. Even before Israel had begun assassinating Iranian scientists, Iran had made it clear it will not give the IAEA physical access to any individual scientists.

The IAEA wants to visit a specific site at Parchin because of information from an unnamed member state, cited in its November 2011 report, that Iran had “constructed a large explosives containment vessel in which to conduct hydrodynamic experiments” – tests of nuclear weapons designs without the use of fissile material.

The report said the construction had been carried out at Parchin military complex in 2000 and that the IAEA had satellite imagery that was “consistent with” that information, meaning only that there were structures that could have housed such a vessel at Parchin in 2000.

The previous history of IAEA inspections at Parchin make it clear, however, that Iran knew it had nothing to hide at Parchin after 2000.

In 2004, John Bolton, the point man in the George W. Bush administration on Iran, who coordinated closely with Israel, charged that satellite imagery showed a bunker at Parchin appropriate for large-scale explosives tests such as those needed to detonate a bomb that would use a neutron trigger.

Bolton put heavy pressure on the IAEA to carry out an investigation at Parchin. A few months later, Tehran agreed to allow the agency to select any five buildings and their surroundings to investigate freely.

That gave U.S. and Israeli intelligence, as well as IAEA experts, an opportunity for which they would not have dreamed of asking: they could scan satellite imagery of the entire Parchin complex for anything that could possibly suggest work on a nuclear weapon, including a containment vessel for hydrodynamic testing, and demand to inspect that building and the grounds around it at their leisure.

In January 2005, an IAEA team visited Parchin and investigated the five areas they had chosen, taking environmental samples, but found nothing suspicious. In November 2005, Iran allowed the IAEA to do the same thing all over again on five more buildings of its own choice.

The Iranian military and nuclear establishment would never have agreed to such terms for IAEA inspection missions at Parchin – not once but twice – if they had been concealing a hydrodynamic test facility at the base.

Other information suggests that no such vessel ever existed at Parchin. The November report claimed the IAEA had obtained information on the dimensions of the containment vessel from the publication of a foreign expert identified as someone who worked “in the nuclear weapons program of the country of his origin”.

That was a reference to Vlachyslav Danilenko, a Ukrainian scientist who has acknowledged having lectured in Iran on theoretical physics and having helped the country build a cylinder for production of nano-diamonds, which was his research specialty. However, Danilenko has firmly denied ever having done any work related to nuclear weapons.

The claim that the dimensions of the putative bomb test chamber at Parchin could be gleaned from a publication by Danilenko is implausible.

The report said the bomb containment chamber at Parchin was “designed to contain the detonation of 70 kilograms of high explosives”. Danilenko’s patented 1992 design for a cylinder for nano-diamond production, however, was built to contain only 10 kg of explosives.

Former IAEA weapons inspector and nuclear weapons expert Robert Kelley has pointed out, moreover, that a container for only 70 kg of explosives could not possibly have been used for hydrodynamic testing of a nuclear weapon design.

The negotiations on a “framework” for Iran’s cooperation with the IAEA recall the negotiation of a “work programme” in August 2007 aimed at resolving a series of issues on which the IAEA Safeguards Department suspected links to nuclear weapons. The issues included experiments involving the extraction of polonium-210, plutonium experiments and possible military control of the Gchine uranium mine.

In previous years, Iran had failed to provide sufficient information to overcome those suspicions. But after the negotiation of the “work programme”, Iran began to move with dispatch to provide documentation aimed at clearing up the six remaining issues.

The IAEA acknowledged that all six of the issues had been effectively resolved in two reports in late 2007 and early 2008.

The reason for the dramatic change in cooperation was simple: the IAEA had pledged that, in return for Iran’s resolving the six issues, “the implementation of safeguards in Iran will be conducted in a routine manner.” That was seen as a significant step toward finally getting a clean bill of health from the agency.

But the IAEA instead then began focusing its questioning entirely on the purported Iranian documents of unknown origin and doubtful authenticity which the IAEA called the “alleged studies”.

*Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, “Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam”, was published in 2006.

Excerpt:

By Jim Lobe and - -
WASHINGTON, Nov 9 2011 (IPS)

A significant gap between the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama and staunchly pro-Israel majorities in both houses of Congress appears to have emerged over what to do in reaction to Tuesday’s report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on possible military applications of Iran’s nuclear programme.

Staunchly pro-Israel lawmakers on Capitol Hill are demanding the imposition, unilaterally if necessary, of “crippling sanctions” against Tehran – targeted initially against Iran’s central bank and the foreign banks that do business with it. If those fail to bring Iran to heel, some are calling on the administration to prepare for air strikes against Tehran’s nuclear facilities and other targets.

If a ramped-up sanctions regime doesn’t “doesn’t work, the other option is military force”, Republican Sen. Lindsay Graham told the widely read Cable blog on foreignpolicy.com Tuesday after the report was released.

The administration’s reaction has been more cautious. Speaking mainly on background, senior officials have told reporters that neither option is being seriously considered at the moment. Instead, the administration hopes to work with its allies in imposing some new “targeted” sanctions and closing loopholes in existing ones.

It also hopes to persuade China and Russia to go along with a new round of sanctions against Iran at the U.N. Security Council, to which it hopes the IAEA’s governing board will formally refer the report when it meets in Vienna late next week. Since 2006, the Council has approved four rounds of sanctions against Tehran.

“(W)hat we’ve been working towards is reinforcing (existing sanctions), working with countries around the world to make sure that those sanctions are upheld and implemented to the fullest extent possible,” said State Department spokesman Mark Toner, who stressed that was “incumbent on Iran to at last engage with the IAEA in a credible and transparent manner to address” the concerns raised in the report.

“I think that as we move forward, we’re going to consult and certainly look at ways to impose additional pressure on Iran,” he said.

Early indications, however, suggested that the administration will find it hard to get both China and Russia on board. In a rare joint action, the two permanent Security Council members lobbied against the publication of the full report that included detailed evidence that Iran has conducted research and tests “relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device” before its release.

While Beijing, a major importer of oil from Iran, called Wednesday for Tehran to “engage in serious co-operation” with the IAEA to clear up questions raised by the report, Moscow took a harder line.

Additional U.N. sanctions “will be seen in the international community as an instrument for regime change in Iran”, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennadi Gatilov said Wednesday. “That approach is unacceptable to us, and the Russian side does not intend to consider such proposals.”

Washington’s major European allies, on the other hand, were more enthusiastic, with France leading the charge.

“If Iran refuses to conform to the demands of the international community and refuses any serious cooperation, we stand ready to adopt, with other willing countries, sanctions on an unprecedented scale,” Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said.

The report, the most sensational parts of which were leaked to various Western media over several days before its actual release, was based on evidence accumulated from 10 member states and a foreign scientist who allegedly worked on the programme, as well as the agency’s own work.

The report found that most of the nuclear-related activities that caused it the greatest concern were carried out between the late 1990s and 2003, but that “some activities may still be ongoing”.

The U.S. intelligence community concluded in 2007 that key facets of a weaponisation programme ceased in 2003 and had not yet resumed – a position it has taken as recently as last March – and that does not appear to be inconsistent with the IAEA report’s main findings.

“The Agency’s ability to construct an equally good understanding of activities in Iran after the end of 2003 is reduced due to the more limited information available to the Agency,” the report stated.

For its part, Iran, which has long denied any intent to build nuclear weapons, has charged that much of the evidence compiled by the IAEA was fabricated.

“This nation won’t retreat one iota from the path it is going,” declared President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a speech to a crowd in Shahr-e-Kord, a city in central Iran. “Why are you ruining the prestige of the (IAEA) for absurd U.S. claims?”

In addition to the leaks of the last few days, the run-up to the report’s release was dominated by a flurry of reports from Israel that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his defence minister, Ehud Barak, were trying to persuade their cabinet to approve a pre-emptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

But Yossi Alpher, a former senior Israeli intelligence officer who publishes the widely read bitterlemons-international.org blog, wrote Wednesday that those reports were apparently designed to take advantage of the forthcoming IAEA report to “generate stronger international sanctions”.

“Right now …hype, pressure and deterrence appear to be the name of the game,” he wrote in an article published Wednesday by the Forward, a major U.S. Jewish newspaper, although he did not exclude the possibility of an eventual Israeli attack.

For his part, Netanyahu declared Wednesday that the IAEA report “corroborates the position of the international community, and of Israel that Iran is developing nuclear weapons”, a conclusion that went significantly beyond the report’s actual findings.

Nonetheless, Netanyahu’s position was echoed here by lawmakers who particularly close to the Israel lobby, whose leading organisation, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), has long sought more confrontational stance toward Tehran.

“If this is not a smoking gun, I don’t know what is,” said Republican Illinois Sen. Mark Kirk, among the biggest recipients of campaign dollars from AIPAC-linked political action committees over the past decade.

Kirk is co-sponsoring legislation with Democratic New York Sen. Charles Schumer that would require Obama to determine within 30 days whether Iran’s central bank is providing support for the country’s nuclear programme, major conventional weapons systems, or terrorism. If so, the president would have to sanction any international financial companies that do business with the central bank, effectively banning their access to the U.S. financial system.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee approved a similar measure introduced last week by the Committee’s senior Democrat, California Rep. Howard Berman. The report “makes crystal clear to any remaining doubters that Iran is developing a nuclear weapons capability”, Berman said in a statement Tuesday.

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

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By Gareth Porter and - -
WASHINGTON, Nov 9 2011 (IPS)

The report of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) published by a Washington think tank Tuesday repeated the sensational claim previously reported by news media all over the world that a former Soviet nuclear weapons scientist had helped Iran construct a detonation system that could be used for a nuclear weapon.

But it turns out that the foreign expert, who is not named in the IAEA report but was identified in news reports as Vyacheslav Danilenko, is not a nuclear weapons scientist but one of the top specialists in the world in the production of nanodiamonds by explosives.

In fact, Danilenko, a Ukrainian, has worked solely on nanodiamonds from the beginning of his research career and is considered one of the pioneers in the development of nanodiamond technology, as published scientific papers confirm.

It now appears that the IAEA and David Albright, the director of the International Institute for Science and Security in Washington, who was the source of the news reports about Danilenko, never bothered to check the accuracy of the original claim by an unnamed “Member State” on which the IAEA based its assertion about his nuclear weapons background.

Albright gave a “private briefing” for “intelligence professionals” last week, in which he named Danilenko as the foreign expert who had been contracted by Iran’s Physics Research Centre in the mid-1990s and identified him as a “former Soviet nuclear scientist”, according to a story by Joby Warrick of the Washington Post on Nov. 5.

The Danilenko story then went worldwide.

The IAEA report says the agency has “strong indications” that Iran’s development of a “high explosions initiation system”, which it has described as an “implosion system” for a nuclear weapon, was “assisted by the work of a foreign expert who was not only knowledgeable on these technologies, but who, a Member State has informed the Agency, worked for much of his career in the nuclear weapon program of the country of his origin.”

The report offers no other evidence of Danilenko’s involvement in the development of an initiation system.

The member state obviously learned that Danilenko had worked during the Soviet period at the All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Technical Physics in Snezhinsk, Russia, which was well known for its work on development of nuclear warheads and simply assumed that he had been involved in that work.

However, further research would have revealed that Danilenko worked from the beginning of his career in a part of the Institute that specialised in the synthesis of diamonds. Danilenko wrote in an account of the early work in the field published in 2006 that he was among the scientists in the “gas dynamics group” at the Institute who were “the first to start studies on diamond synthesis in 1960”.

Danilenko’s recollections of the early period of his career are in a chapter of the book, “Ultrananocrystalline Diamond: Synthesis, Properties and Applications” edited by Olga A. Shenderova and Dieter M. Gruen, published in 2006.

Another chapter in the book covering the history of Russian patents related to nanodiamonds documents the fact that Danilenko’s centre at the Institute developed key processes as early as 1963-66 that were later used at major “detonaton nanodiamond” production centres.

Danilenko left the Institute in 1989 and joined the Institute of Materials Science Problems in Ukraine, according to the authors of that chapter.

Danilenko’s major accomplishment, according to the authors, has been the development of a large-scale technology for producing ultradispersed diamonds, a particular application of nanodiamonds. The technology, which was later implemented by the “ALIT” company in Zhitomir, Ukraine, is based on an explosion chamber 100 cubic metres in volume, which Danilenko designed.

Beginning in 1993, Danilenko was a principal in a company called “Nanogroup” which was established initially in the Ukraine but is now based in Prague. The company’s website boasts that it has “the strongest team of scientists” which had been involved in the “introduction of nanodiamonds in 1960 and the first commercial applications of nanodiamonds in 2000”.

The declared aim of the company is to supply worldwide demand for nanodiamonds.

Iran has an aggressive programme to develop its nanotechnology sector, and it includes as one major focus nanodiamonds, as blogger Moon of Alabama has pointed out. That blog was the first source to call attention to Danilenko’s nanodiamond background.

Danilenko clearly explained that the purpose of his work in Iran was to help the development of a nanodiamond industry in the country.

The report states that the “foreign expert” was in Iran from 1996 to about 2002, “ostensibly to assist in the development of a facility and techniques for making ultra dispersed diamonds (UDDs) or nanodiamonds…” That wording suggests that nanodiamonds were merely a cover for his real purpose in Iran.

The report says the expert “also lectured on explosive physics and its applications”, without providing any further detail about what applications were involved.

The fact that the IAEA and Albright were made aware of Danilenko’s nanodiamond work in Iran before embracing the “former Soviet nuclear weapons specialist” story makes their failure to make any independent inquiry into his background even more revealing.

The tale of a Russian nuclear weapons scientist helping construct an “implosion system” for a nuclear weapon is the most recent iteration of a theme that the IAEA introduced in its May 2008 report, which mentioned a five-page document describing experimentation with a “complex multipoint initiation system to detonate a substantial amount of high explosives in hemispherical geometry” and to monitor the detonation.

Iran acknowledged using “exploding bridge wire” detonators such as those mentioned in that document for conventional military and civilian applications. But it denounced the document, along with the others in the “alleged studies” collection purporting to be from an Iranian nuclear weapons research programme, as fakes.

Careful examination of the “alleged studies” documents has revealed inconsistencies and other anomalies that give evidence of fraud. But the IAEA, the United States and its allies in the IAEA continue to treat the documents as though there were no question about their authenticity.

The unnamed member state that informed the agency about Danilenko’s alleged experience as a Soviet nuclear weapons scientist is almost certainly Israel, which has been the source of virtually all the purported intelligence on Iranian work on nuclear weapons over the past decade.

Israel has made no secret of its determination to influence world opinion on the Iranian nuclear programme by disseminating information to governments and news media, including purported Iran government documents. Israeli foreign ministry and intelligence officials told journalists Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins about the special unit of Mossad dedicated to that task at the very time the fraudulent documents were being produced.

In an interview in September 2008, Albright said Olli Heinonen, then deputy director for safeguards at the IAEA, had told him that a document from a member state had convinced him that the “alleged studies” documents were genuine. Albright said the state was “probably Israel”.

The Jerusalem Post’s Yaakov Katz reported Wednesday that Israeli intelligence agencies had “provided critical information used in the report”, the purpose of which was to “push through a new regime of sanctions against Tehran….”

*Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, “Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam”, was published in 2006.

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The Tehran Research Reactor where uranium enriched to 20 percent is used to produce medical isotopes. Credit: Jim Lobe/IPS

By - - and Barbara Slavin
WASHINGTON, Nov 8 2011 (IPS)

A new report on Iran’s nuclear programme provides substantial evidence that Iran carried out extensive research into how to make a nuclear weapon prior to 2003 but is shaky about how much work has continued.

Citing “a wide variety of independent sources”, including material from 10 member states and from a foreign scientist who worked on the programme, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Tuesday that Iranians had conducted multiple activities “relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device” from the late 1990s until 2003.

The material, listed in great detail in a 14-page annex to a regular IAEA report on Iran, should provide ample new ammunition for the agency and the international community to press Iran for answers and for improved access to its nuclear facilities. There is no indication, however, that Iran has actually built a nuclear weapon.

There is new information that Iran experimented with producing uranium metal for a bomb, with high explosives needed to trigger a nuclear device, and studied how to produce a warhead small enough to fit on a ballistic missile. Satellite information shows Iran built a “large explosives containment vessel” at a site near Tehran in which to conduct experiments, the report said.

“It remains for Iran to explain the rationale behind these activities,” which violate Iran’s commitments to peaceful nuclear activities under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the agency said.

The report is much less authoritative about what went on after 2003, when Iran at least temporarily halted the programme following the revelation that it was building a uranium enrichment plant at Natanz and a heavy water plant and reactor at Arak.

“The Agency’s ability to construct an equally good understanding of activities in Iran after the end of 2003 is reduced due to the more limited information available to the Agency,” the report acknowledged.

Thus the findings appear to be consistent with a much maligned 2007 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate which expressed “medium confidence” that Iran had not restarted a weaponisation programme at that time.

Conservative groups immediately pounced on the findings to demand harsh new measures against Iran, including sanctioning Iran’s Central Bank and retaining “all options” – meaning a military attack.

“There can no longer be any doubt about the intent or direction of the Iran nuclear weapons effort, which is progressing rapidly,” said a statement by Richard Stone and Malcolm Hoenlein, the chairman and executive vice chairman, respectively, of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations. “The report leaves no room for ambiguity and demands a quick, comprehensive plan in which all options are included.”

However, the main aspects of the programme have been known for several years and discussed in previous IAEA publications.

David Albright, a former nuclear inspector and president of the Institute for Science and International Security, told IPS that he was comforted by the new evidence that “pressure worked” and that Iran stopped what the IAEA called a “structured” programme in 2003.

“It’s important to know that they didn’t succeed in building a reliable warhead that could fit on one of their missiles,” he said. “We’re much better off that it was stopped when it was.”

He added, however, that the Iranians “know how to build a nuclear weapon and know the problems they have to solve to make them reliable.”

Sourcing for allegations of Iranian work after 2003 is thin. For example, only one unnamed IAEA member provided information that Iran had tried after 2004 to manufacture elements of what is known as a neutron initiator, necessary to trigger a chain reaction leading to a nuclear explosion.

Two unnamed member states were the source of allegations that in 2008 and 2009, Iran carried out computer modeling of a nuclear device “subjected to shock compression”, another step in building a reliable bomb.

“There are new details but the overall picture that the report paints we have heard before,” said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association. “There is no new information about a new location or a new area of experimentation.”

The Iranian government had no immediate reaction to the report, which was given to members of the IAEA board and swiftly leaked to the press. In the past, Tehran has accused the IAEA of confronting it with forgeries, while admitting that some research has taken place.

The Barack Obama administration was also subdued and suggested it would use the information to press harder for a diplomatic solution, including tougher enforcement of existing sanctions against Iran.

In some respects, the most worrisome aspects of the report were in its initial pages devoted to Iran’s safeguarded facilities. The report said Iran has continued its slow but steady accumulation of enriched uranium and now has nearly 5,000 kilogrammes of uranium enriched to five percent and nearly 74 kilogrammes of uranium enriched to 20 percent U-235. If converted to weapons grade uranium – which is 90 percent U-235 – that stockpile is enough for several bombs.

The findings were revealed in advance of an IAEA board meeting next week that is likely to be stormy.

“The most important thing is for Iran to come clean on weaponisation,” Albright said. “If they deal with this, the enrichment programme will be much less of a problem.”

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