U.S. intelligence on Iran unreliable, diplomats say
VIENNA, Austria – Despite growing international concern about Iran’s nuclear program and its regional ambitions, most U.S. intelligence shared with the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency has proved inaccurate and none has led to significant discoveries inside Iran, diplomats here said.
The officials said the CIA and other Western spy services have provided sensitive information to the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency at least since 2002, when Iran’s long-secret nuclear program was exposed. But none of the tips about supposed secret weapons sites provided clear evidence that the Islamic Republic is developing illicit weapons.
“Since 2002, pretty much all the intelligence that’s come to us has proved to be wrong,” said a senior diplomat at the IAEA. Another official here described the agency’s intelligence stream as “very cold now (because) so little panned out.”
The reliability of U.S. information and assessments on Iran is increasingly an issue as the Bush administration confronts the emerging regional power on multiple fronts: its expanding nuclear effort, its alleged support for insurgents inside Iraq and its backing of Middle East militant groups.
The CIA still faces harsh criticism for its pre-war intelligence errors on Iraq.
American officials privately acknowledge that much of their evidence on Iran’s nuclear plans and programs remains ambiguous, fragmented and difficult to prove.
The IAEA has its own concerns about Iran’s nuclear program, though agency officials concede they have found no proof that nuclear material has been diverted.
Iran’s radical regime began enriching uranium in small amounts last August in a program it insists will provide fuel only for civilian power stations, not nuclear weapons.
On Thursday, the IAEA released a report declaring that Iran had expanded uranium enrichment and defied a Security Council deadline to suspend nuclear activities. In the meantime, the agency is locked in a dispute with Tehran, the Iranian capital, over additional information and access to determine if the program is peaceful.
In November 2005, U.N. inspectors leafing through a box of papers in Tehran discovered a 15-page document that showed how to form highly enriched uranium into the configuration needed for the core of a nuclear bomb. Iran said the paper came from Pakistan, but has rebuffed IAEA requests to let inspectors take or copy it for further analysis.
Diplomats here were less convinced by documents recovered by U.S. intelligence from a laptop computer stolen from Iran. American analysts first briefed senior IAEA officials on the contents of the hard drive at the U.S. mission here in mid-2005.
The documents included detailed designs to upgrade ballistic missiles to carry nuclear warheads, drawings for subterranean testing of high explosives, and two pages describing research into uranium tetrafluoride, known as “green salt,” which is used during uranium enrichment.
IAEA officials remain suspicious of the information in part because most of the papers are in English rather than Farsi, the Iranian language.