Robert Kelley: Latest IAEA report recycles old intelligence and is meant to bolster hard liners

In this interview, Prabir Purkayastha, Delhi Science Forum, discusses the latest IAEA report on Iran's nuclear program. While numerous right-wing groups in the US and Israel are up in arms at what is said to be a clear indictment of Iran's nuclear regime, a critical reading of the IAEA report raises disturbing questions on the impartiality of the IAEA as well as more fundamental questions regarding the fulfilment of treaty and other international obligations by countries on different sides of the North-South divide. In a wide ranging discussion, Prabir points out the various legal and factual errors in the IAEA Report and paints an interesting, if rather disturbing picture of the role of supra-national watchdog bodies such as the IAEA in maintaining international peace and comity.

In 2004, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) revealed that a member state had violated its Safeguards Agreement by carrying out covert uranium conversion and enrichment activities and plutonium experiments for more than two decades. The nature of certain of those enrichment activities, moreover, raised legitimate suspicions of interest in a nuclear weapons programme.

The war drums are out in Washington, with the same people beating them as did for the last Iraq war. Even the excuses are same: nuclear weapons in Iran. The missing WMD's in Iraq have not daunted their spirit one bit.

Does anyone remember all the lies that they were told by President Bush and the “mainstream media” about the grave threat to America from weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? These lies were repeated endlessly in the print and TV media despite the reports from the weapons inspectors, who had been sent to Iraq, that no such weapons existed.

Iran has told the U.N. nuclear watchdog that it has a second uranium enrichment plant under construction, a belated disclosure sure to heighten Western fears of a stealthy Iranian quest for nuclear arms capability.