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IAEA Describes Broad and Systematic Iranian Concealment of Nuclear Activities By Joe Fiorill WASHINGTON — Iran has systematically concealed wide-ranging nuclear activities including the production of small amounts of plutonium and low-enriched uranium, but it is not clear whether the country has tried to develop a nuclear weapon, the International Atomic Energy Agency told its Board of Governors yesterday in a confidential report (see GSN, Nov. 10). The IAEA cited “serious concerns” about Iran’s activities. The agency said that although Iran’s breaches involve small quantities of nuclear material that “would require further reprocessing before being suitable for weapons purposes,” they “have dealt with the most sensitive aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle, including enrichment and reprocessing.” Since the IAEA board in September set a deadline for increased Iranian cooperation, though, Iran has promised and “shown active cooperation and openness,” according to the report (see GSN, Sept. 12). At the prodding of the United States and other countries concerned that Iran could be seeking nuclear weapons under cover of peaceful activities, the board in September passed a resolution setting an Oct. 31 deadline for Iran to step up cooperation with the agency, including by suspending uranium enrichment activities and signing the Additional Protocol to its IAEA safeguards agreement. Iran said last month during a visit by European foreign ministers that it would comply with the resolution (see GSN, Oct. 29). Yesterday, Tehran officially informed the IAEA of its intention to comply with the demands, and the IAEA report includes mention of the late-breaking development, indicating Iran promised to suspend enrichment as of yesterday and to “act in accordance with the provisions of” the Additional Protocol “pending its entry into force.” IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei termed the letter “a welcome and positive development.” Yesterday’s report, obtained today by Global Security Newswire, was requested in the September resolution and will be a focus of discussion when the board meets next week in Vienna. The report covers mainly developments since the board’s last meeting, in particular an Oct. 21 letter from Iran to the IAEA that contained numerous revelations about the country’s past concealment of nuclear activity. “To date, there is no evidence that the previously undeclared nuclear material and activities … were related to a nuclear weapons program. However, given Iran’s past pattern of concealment, it will take some time before the agency is able to conclude that Iran’s nuclear program is exclusively for peaceful purposes,” the report reads. Brookings Institution proliferation expert Michael Levi said the “main point here is that the deception has been far more systematic and long-term than had been previously believed,” adding that the report includes “an immense amount of detail that really hasn’t been in public before.” “If any one of this litany of activities had been found in Iraq, it would have been a massive violation of Iraq’s obligations. The difference is that Iran is not being held to the same set of standards,” for strategic and political reasons, Levi said today in an interview. According to the report, “Iran has now acknowledged that it has been developing, for 18 years, a uranium centrifuge enrichment program, and, for 12 years, a laser enrichment program. In that context, Iran has admitted that it produced small amounts of LEU [low-enriched uranium] using both centrifuge and laser enrichment processes and that it had failed to report a large number of conversion, fabrication and irradiation activities involving nuclear material, including the separation of a small amount of plutonium.” “Based on all information currently available to the agency, it is clear that Iran has failed in a number of instances over an extended period of time to meet its obligations under its safeguards agreement with respect to the reporting of nuclear material and its processing and use, as well as the declaration of facilities where such material has been processed and stored,” the report says. Report Details Iranian Omissions, Now AcknowledgedThe report covers secret Iranian efforts to reprocess nuclear material, enrich uranium and develop a heavy-water reactor. The IAEA indicated that, although Tehran has for many years failed to declare materials and activities as required, it is now providing the agency with information and materials to corroborate its belated acknowledgments. “Iran’s nuclear program, as the agency currently understands it, consists of a practically complete front end of a nuclear fuel cycle, including uranium mining and milling, conversion, enrichment, fuel fabrication, heavy-water production, a light-water reactor, a heavy-water research reactor and associated research and development facilities,” according to the report. The report indicates that, starting Oct. 9, Iran provided the IAEA with important, previously undisclosed information about uranium conversion in the country. Between 1981 and 1993, Iran said, it conducted bench-scale preparation of uranium dioxide, uranium trioxide, ammonium uranyl carbonate, uranium tetrafluoride and uranium hexafluoride at facilities in Esfahan and Tehran. In its Oct. 21 letter to the IAEA, Iran added that such bench-scale and laboratory activities involved both material exempted from IAEA safeguards and safeguarded material declared to the IAEA as a process loss ― a deception Levi called a “particularly disturbing incident.” On Nov. 1, Iran “agreed to submit” to the IAEA “all relevant inventory change reports (ICRs) and design information to cover those activities,” according to the report. Also in the Oct. 21 letter, Iran said that from 1998 to last year, it tested centrifuges at the Kalaye Electric Co. site in Tehran using uranium hexafluoride imported in 1991; that from 1991 to 2000, it conducted laser enrichment activities, using 30 kilograms of undeclared uranium metal; and that from 1988 to 1992, it irradiated seven kilograms of uranium dioxide targets and “extracted small quantities of plutonium.” The latter activity involved safeguards-exempt depleted uranium, Iran subsequently told the agency, adding that the “experiments had been carried out to learn about the nuclear fuel cycle and to gain experience in reprocessing chemistry.” “Neither the activities nor the separated plutonium had been reported previously to the agency,” the IAEA said. As with its uranium conversion activities, Iran promised the agency to provide the necessary materials and information for verification of its claims about reprocessing. Iran said Nov. 1 that it would “submit all nuclear material accountancy reports and design information … covering these activities” and “presented the separated plutonium and the irradiated unprocessed targets to agency inspectors,” according to the report. The uranium centrifuge activities described in the Oct. 21 letter involved 1.9 kilograms of uranium hexafluoride, “the absence of which the state authorities had earlier attempted to conceal by attributing the loss to evaporation due to leaking valves on the cylinders containing the gas,” the report indicates. In another enrichment development, Iran acknowledged during an Oct. 2-3 IAEA visit to the country that it has imported and installed “laser-related equipment” at a facility in Tehran: a laser spectroscopy laboratory in 1992 and a large vacuum vessel in 2000. Although Iran told IAEA inspectors during a subsequent October visit that equipment and people related to the laser spectroscopy laboratory would be made available to them, the interviews and provision of equipment were “deferred,” according to the report. Iran further acknowledged during an Oct. 27-Nov. 1 IAEA visit that it set up a pilot laser enrichment plant at Lashkar Ab’ad in 2000, a project that involved contracts for information and equipment and included laser enrichment experiments conducted between October of last year and January of this year with previously undeclared, imported natural uranium metal. “The laser enrichment one really makes you wonder. You have to really be concerned about how far that’s gone, because it’s very easy to hide,” said Levi. For the enrichment activities, as it did for the conversion and reprocessing activities, Iran has moved to come clean. The country has “agreed to provide the relevant ICRs and design information” on the centrifuge enrichment “and to present the nuclear material for agency verification.” Regarding laser enrichment, Tehran provided the IAEA with some equipment and material Oct. 28 and said Nov. 1 that it would “submit all of the relevant ICRs and design information and … present the nuclear material for agency verification.” Iran has also provided the IAEA with information on domestic and imported centrifuge components to help the agency verify Tehran’s claim that traces of highly enriched uranium found in IAEA environmental sampling were already present when Iran imported the items. Levi said the agency’s language in the report is insufficiently tough, given the breaches described. He accused the agency of adopting a fundamentally flawed approach to Iran by suggesting it can eventually determine whether Iran has peaceful intentions, rather than simply stating that the country has already shown it is not “playing by the rules.” Although “the IAEA continues to insist that with enough investigation, it can determine whether this is a peaceful nuclear program or not,” Levi said, the agency cannot do so with certainty and has already found ample evidence to support allegations that Iran is seeking a nuclear weapon. “There is no mandate for the IAEA to find a nuclear arms program. … It’s incredibly difficult to find the capability to assemble a bomb … and the IAEA has found a hidden program to produce fissile materials,” Levi said. “It’s impossible to present all the new evidence,” Levi added, “without sending a clear message that Iran has been in massive violation of its NPT obligations. … Certainly, Iran needs to pay a price for its willful violations of the NPT ― at the minimum, it should lose whatever right it may have once had to enrich uranium.”
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