Friday, March 29, 2024
03:25 PM (GMT +5)

Go Back   CSS Forums > General > News & Articles

News & Articles Here you can share News and Articles that you consider important for the exam

Reply Share Thread: Submit Thread to Facebook Facebook     Submit Thread to Twitter Twitter     Submit Thread to Google+ Google+    
 
LinkBack Thread Tools Search this Thread
  #1  
Old Wednesday, November 30, 2005
Abdullah
Guest
 
Posts: n/a
Angry The Bitter and the Biting

When bullying is not enough, try disinformation
Siddharth Varadarajan
In the run-up to the crucial November 24 International Atomic Energy Agency board of governors meeting in Vienna, the Bush administration has pulled out all the stops in its efforts to cajole, bully and scare the world into believing Iran is on the verge of acquiring a nuclear weapons capability. The purpose of the drama is to convince not just a majority of board members to back a resolution referring Iran to the UN Security Council but, more crucially, to ensure Russia also comes on board this time. China is unlikely to revise its vote and the support of India, which disqualified itself as a serious player in the negotiation process by siding with the US in September, is today being taken for granted in Washington.
Relying on clever "news" leaks and tendentious opinions conveniently attributed to "diplomats close to the IAEA", (how come nobody talks of 'western diplomats' anymore?) the US has even managed to render sinister a significant act of transparency by the Iranians. The 'confidential' report of the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency for the November 24 meeting notes that Iran-- in seeking to answer the agency's questions about the completeness of its declarations -- has handed over a number of documents relating to its work on the P-1 centrifuge design obtained from the clandestine network run by A Q Khan. The Iranians also provided IAEA inspectors with a document supplied by the network in 1987, which shows how to cast "enriched, natural and depleted uranium metal into hemispherical forms." The IAEA's report makes no comment on the significance of this document -- passing reference to which had in any case been made in the IAEA DG's September report -- but the Associated Press on November 18 quoted "diplomats close to the agency" as saying that "it appeared to be a design for the core of a nuclear warhead." Who are these diplomats? AP says they "requested anonymity in exchange for discussing the [IAEA's] confidential report." How convenient.
Now, most reasonable people would conclude that if Iran voluntarily handed over a document, and clarified that it neither solicited the information contained nor acted on it, it is highly unlikely that the Iranians would be running a secret nuclear weapons programme. After all, after committing a crime, the last thing the culprit will do is present the world with the smoking gun. But then the American approach is far from reasonable. Washington's top diplomat at the IAEA, Gregory L Schulte, promptly declared the document (which he dishonestly claimed the IAEA had "unearthed") opened "new concerns about weaponisation". And thereby hangs a tale.
Five days earlier, by a curious coincidence, The New York Times had recycled an old Bush administration story about the existence of Iranian computer files allegedly dealing with Tehran's plans to build -- you guessed it -- a nuclear warhead atop a Shahab missile. In the light of the 1987 document, the NYT story seems highly significant, even alarming. So alarming, in fact, that one suspects the same "diplomats close to the agency" -- who would have had access to Dr el-Baradei's draft report and known about the documents Iran had handed over -- realised it would be a jolly good idea to "sex up" the Iranians' naive display of transparency as proof of imminent weaponisation by planting, in advance, the dodgy story about warhead designs.
The Iranian warhead design story, an intelligence lemon of the Niger yellowcake or nuclear-capable Iraqi aluminium tubes variety, was first aired by Colin Powell last November and widely discredited. In March this year, The Wall Street Journal resurrected the story and in August -- in the run-up to the controversial September 24 IAEA vote that declared Iran to be in "non-compliance" with its safeguards obligations - the WSJ ran it again, as did The Washington Post.
Even if the American media hasn't learned its lessons from the Bush administration's war drive to Iraq, sections of the arms control and intelligence community definitely have. In a letter to the NYT, David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) and a former weapons inspector for the IAEA, pointed out what he said was a "deep and misleading flaw" in the newspaper's story: the Farsi-language computer files in question dealt with plans for a re-entry vehicle and not a nuclear warhead. Having had access to the files, he noted that they did not carry any words such as "nuclear" or "nuclear warhead". Accordingly, he said, the NYT had an obligation to print a correction.
The correction, however, never appeared. What ensued, instead, was an exchange of emails between Dr Albright and the NYT reporter and, finally, the investigations editor of the newspaper, who declared that the original story was correct and offered the hapless Dr Albright a cup of coffee as compensation for his efforts.
In a follow-up email, Dr Albright made additional points, which are worth quoting in detail: "There is a significant difference between a re-entry vehicle and a nuclear warhead, particularly as discussed in these documents," he told the NYT reporters. "The documents are almost exclusively about a re-entry vehicle. It is not as you say that most people refer to everything on the pointy end of the missile as the warhead ... Based on information I have collected on these documents over the last year, the documents do not discuss a nuclear core, the design of high explosives lenses, a neutron initiator, or other key parts of a nuclear weapon. The documents do discuss that inside the re-entry vehicle is a spherical object involving high explosives and detonated by electrical bridge wires. That is a far cry from a nuclear warhead design or the development of a nuclear warhead. Although these documents do discuss the best positioning of a heavy spherical object, there is no mention of nuclear fuel, as you speculate."
Dr Albright then made a wider point about the responsibility of the media. "We can assess or infer that the object inside the re-entry vehicle is likely a nuclear warhead, but the documents do not discuss its design or even mention that it is a nuclear warhead. This distinction is critical to make to the readers and the public. The first reason is to be accurate about such an important and sensitive issue. I do not have to tell you or your colleagues at the NYT that the media has a serious responsibility to present the evidence as accurately as possible. The media needs to be especially careful not to exaggerate any nuclear threat. I am afraid that your article, whether inadvertently or intentionally, has done just that. The words selected to describe or summarize information do matter."
If Dr Albright is correct - and assuming the computer files and purloined laptop from which they were obtained are genuine - it is not just the NYT's reporters who were taken for a ride by their Bush administration sources. So were a number of countries, including India. The warhead design files formed the centrepiece of a "highly classified" briefing given by US officials to key IAEA board members in the run-up to the September 24 vote against Iran. Among the countries briefed was India.
The Manmohan Singh government, which presumably was flattered by the American decision to put it into the "picture", has said repeatedly that it does not want another nuclear weapon state in the neighbourhood and that New Delhi's decision to vote against Tehran in September was largely motivated by its realisation that "proliferation" by Iran was a very real and immediate danger. It now turns out this realisation was based on poor political judgement and flawed intelligence.
The author is strategic affairs editor of 'The Hindu'
Reply With Quote
Reply

Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Trackbacks are On
Pingbacks are On
Refbacks are On



CSS Forum on Facebook Follow CSS Forum on Twitter

Disclaimer: All messages made available as part of this discussion group (including any bulletin boards and chat rooms) and any opinions, advice, statements or other information contained in any messages posted or transmitted by any third party are the responsibility of the author of that message and not of CSSForum.com.pk (unless CSSForum.com.pk is specifically identified as the author of the message). The fact that a particular message is posted on or transmitted using this web site does not mean that CSSForum has endorsed that message in any way or verified the accuracy, completeness or usefulness of any message. We encourage visitors to the forum to report any objectionable message in site feedback. This forum is not monitored 24/7.

Sponsors: ArgusVision   vBulletin, Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.