[News] IAEA report thrives on laptop of lies

[Anti-Imperialist News]

IAEA report thrives on laptop of lies
Tue Nov 8, 2011 6:44PM
By Ismail Salami

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/209074.html

According to a cable released by the Wikileaks in October 2009, 
"Amano reminded [the] ambassador on several occasions that he would 
need to make concessions to the G-77 [the developing countries 
group], which correctly required him to be fair-minded and 
independent, but that he was solidly in the US court on every key 
strategic decision, from high-level personnel appointments to the 
handling of Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program."

In an atmosphere of cringing obedience to Washington, Mr. Amano 
cannot choose but to play into the hands of the US officials who look 
over his shoulders and observe with diligence what he puts to paper 
in the report he writes about Iran.

The US-engineered new allegation against the Islamic Republic which 
is part of a 15-page document issued by the International Atomic 
Energy Agency is that Iran carried out "work on the development of an 
indigenous design of a nuclear weapon including the testing of 
components. Some activities relevant to the development of a nuclear 
explosive device continued after 2003" and "some may still be 
ongoing." This new allegation is indeed based on the fiction of the 
laptop of death.

Allegations against the Islamic Republic practically started in 2004 
when a mysterious figure handed over to the CIA a laptop he had 
purloined from an Iranian technician purportedly working at a nuclear 
plant in Iran. The laptop which has come to be known as the laptop of 
death is said to contain pages and pages of top-secret information in 
English detailing Iran's lust for attaining technical knowhow to 
produce nuclear payroll for Shahab III missile.

When closely scrutinized one can see that the claim soon begins to 
lose credibility. Nonproliferation expert Jeffrey Lewis of the New 
America Foundation says the biggest loophole in the claim is the 
crude manner in which the laptop documents were constructed: "What 
led many of us to have serious doubts about it was how utterly 
unconnected from reality some of the information seemed. Some of the 
reports indicated that some of the view graphs were done in 
PowerPoint, which suggested to me that the program was not terribly 
sophisticated." [Inter Press Service, 12/9/2006; New York Times, 12/4/2007]

Another fault which shoots another hole in the claim is that the 
documents were written in English, a language barely used in official 
Iranian documents let alone in documents of such paramount sensitivity.

In 2005, the US officials briefed the IAEA of the contents of the 
documents which they said described Iranian computer simulations and 
their efforts to design a nuclear weapon. However, they declined to 
provide the IAEA officials with any actual documents. In 2008, a 
battle ensued between the then IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei and 
George W. Bush.

Washington's resistance to provide the IAEA or any experts in the 
field with solid documents soon translated their doubt into certainty 
that the hypothetical documents were not real and that the US 
government had built an unsteady castle of doubts to the satisfaction 
of the anti-Iran ill wishers.

ElBaradei who thought Iran should be given a fair chance to see at 
least some of the invisible documents found out that this was too 
much to expect of Washington.

According to American and foreign officials, the laptop documents 
detailed a project known as Green Salt, involving uranium processing, 
high explosives and a missile warhead design.

In 2007, Iran's former Deputy Minister of Defense, General Ali Reza 
Asgari, disappeared mysteriously in Turkey. A report carried by The 
Guardian however quoted former CIA officer Vincent Cannistraro as 
saying that Asgari "is a longtime Western intelligence agent, and is 
immediately debriefed by Turkish and US intelligence officials. 
Asgari will be given a new identity; his current whereabouts are 
unknown to the public." (The Guardian, 12/8/2007). It was alleged by 
US sources that Asgari had defected with "bags of documents," about 
Iran's nuclear program and that the US officials would be in a 
position to use the information Asgari provided to corroborate the 
finding that Iran had stopped research into nuclear weapons development.

In fact, 
<http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2010/12/11/mr-x-imprisoned-in-israel-is-iranian-abducted-by-mossad/>Asgari 
was abducted by Mossad and CIA agents while he was in Turkey and 
transferred to Israel through the United States' Incirlik military 
base in Turkey. A Ynetnews report stated that a prisoner had 
committed suicide in solitary confinement in Israel's Ayalon prison 
(Ynetnews.com 28 December 2010). However, it was later revealed that 
<http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2010/12/27/iranian-general-murdered-in-israels-ayalon-prison/>a 
source within the "inner circle" of the Israeli Defense Ministry had 
identified the prisoner as Asgari and that he had been murdered.

The abduction of General Asgari by the CIA and Mossad agents was 
meant to serve as a compelling evidence for manipulating the 
international public opinion into believing that Iran is indeed 
seeking to produce nuclear weapons.

Washington resorts to any means of coercion, duress, abduction and 
fabrication to push ahead with its agenda of accusing the Islamic 
republic of pursuing a clandestine nuclear weapons program and 
striking fear into the heart of the world that Iran is on the course 
of producing nuclear weapons and that the world is on the brink of ruination.

These are strange times.

Like a juggling fiend, Washington produces some invisible documents 
from an old laptop obtained from an imaginary person; the invisible 
information is then metamorphosed into a series of serious threats 
for global security and waters the roots of animosity towards and 
fear for the Islamic Republic while Israel, the main game player 
which pulls Washington's strings, possesses a huge arsenal of over 
300 nuclear warheads, test fires nuclear capable missiles with a 
range of 10,000 kilometers and can target not only Iran but Russia 
and China and many other countries as well does not become a source 
of angst in the world.


-- Ismail Salami is an Iranian author and political analyst. A 
prolific writer, he has written numerous books and articles on the 
Middle East. His articles have been translated into a number of languages.
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