FDD hawks tried to launder public allied intel
docs in an effort to halt JCPOA talks, but a
closer look reveals a house of cards.
By Ben Armbruster
June 13, 2021 "Information
Clearing House" - -
"Responsible
Statecraft" -Iran
hawks are pulling out all the stops in their
campaign to prevent Iran and the United States
from returning to full compliance with the 2015
nuclear accord.
The latest effort comes in the form of an
opinion piece published last week in
Politico Europe by Foundation for Defense of
Democracies fellows Benjamin Weinthal and
Alireza Nader, purporting to show that Iran is
currently seeking to develop nuclear weapons,
and therefore, they claim, American diplomats
should “take a timeout” from the JCPOA
negotiations.
Weinthal — whose portfolio includes
harassing people on Twitter — and Nader cite
“European intelligence findings about the
Islamic Republic’s illicit atomic weapons
activities” which “make it clear that Tehran
sought technology in 2020 for constructing
nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass
destruction.”
It’s a clever presentation that could easily
fool a casual reader into believing that Iran is
indeed developing nuclear weapons under the
noses of U.S., European, Russian, and Chinese
diplomats (if you can believe that Weinthal and
Nader of all people know something they don’t).
But the evidence they culled from these European
intel reports — which are public, by the way —
prove no such thing.
The first piece of evidence they cite is a
public Swedish Security Service report that has
concluded the following:
“Iran also conducts industrial espionage,
which is mainly targeted against Swedish
hi-tech industry and Swedish products, which
can be used in nuclear weapons programs.
Iran is investing heavy resources in this
area and some of the resources are used in
Sweden.”
The key line they want you to focus on here
is “which can be used in nuclear weapons
programs” — or in other words “dual use”
technologies. But the report does not state
outright that Iran is using this stolen tech for
nuclear weapons, just that it’s possible.
What Weinthal and Nader also don’t mention is
that the Swedish intel report also said that
Russia, China, and Iran have tried to “gather
information and knowledge from Swedish
universities and colleges,” but it only singled
out Russian and Chinese activities, i.e. not
Iranian, as focused on “military research.”
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Next the FDD fellows claim that Dutch
intelligence has concluded that “Iran’s regime
sought technology for nuclear and possibly other
WMD weaponry.” But here again, the evidence they
present does not support their conclusion.
They quote a Dutch intel report saying, “The
joint Counter-Proliferation Unit of the AIVD and
the MIVD [the country’s Military Intelligence
and Security Service] is investigating how
countries try to obtain the knowledge and goods
they need to make weapons of mass destruction.
Countries such as Syria, Pakistan, Iran and
North Korea also tried to acquire such goods and
technology in Europe and the Netherlands last
year.”
Again, Weinthal and Nader are seemingly
relaying this information because they want you
to focus on the term “weapons of mass
destruction,” which does not necessarily mean
nuclear weapons. And they don’t say what the
Dutch mean by that either.
The reality is that what constitutes WMD is
quite broad. For example, the U.S. Department of
Homeland Security
defines WMD as “a nuclear, radiological,
chemical, biological, or other device that is
intended to harm a large number of people,”
while the FBI
says WMD can be defined simply as “[a]
destructive device, such as an explosive or
incendiary bomb, rocket, or grenade.”
But what makes this particular piece of
evidence — that is meant to prove “Iran’s
intention to develop nuclear weapons” — even
weaker is the Dutch don’t say what Iran has done
specifically, only that it, along with three
other countries, have engaged in some very
general activities aimed at acquiring “knowledge
and goods” for unspecified WMD.
Continuing this trend, Weinthal and Nader
then claim that intelligence reports from two
German states, Bavaria and Schleswig-Holstein,
“outlined Tehran’s efforts to obtain weapons of
mass destruction material on German soil in
2020.”
But here again, Iran is lumped in with North
Korea, Syria, and Pakistan as conducting general
nefarious activities related to non-specified
WMD. They write:
“Proliferation-relevant states like Iran,
North Korea, Syria and Pakistan are making
efforts to expand their conventional arsenal
of weapons through the production or
constant modernization of weapons of mass
destruction,”
the state of Bavaria’s agency wrote in its
report. The German state of
Schleswig-Holstein
disclosed in its intelligence report the
deceptive methods Iran uses to cover up its
efforts to secure illicit technology for
the world’s most deadly weapons:
“Proliferation-relevant countries such as
Iran, North Korea and Syria, but also
Pakistan, try to circumvent safety
precautions and legal export regulations and
to disguise illegal procurement activities.
To do this, they turn to mostly
conspiratorial means and methods,” the
intelligence agency wrote.
In no way do any of these intel reports that
Weinthal and Nader cite say explicitly that Iran
is, in their words, seeking technology “for
constructing nuclear weapons.”
But even if that was true, it’s unclear why
that would mean the United States has to pause
its pursuit of rejoining the JCPOA, which would
prevent Iran from using any of this technology
it has supposedly illicitly acquired to build a
nuclear bomb.
Of course what Iran is up to in Europe based
on these public intel reports is not good, which
is why what Weinthal and Nader propose — “[a]
joint U.S.-EU task force … with its findings
released, at a minimum, to Congress” — isn’t
that crazy of an idea. But why does that have to
come at the expense of diplomacy to officially,
and permanently, limit Iran’s nuclear program?
The article concludes by claiming that
International Atomic Energy Agency Director
Rafael Grossi is also “sounding a warning” and
they quote him saying that the IAEA “found
traces of uranium that has (sic) been subject to
industrial processing in different places, which
had not been declared by Iran.”
But what Weinthal and Nader don’t tell you is
that Grossi is sounding an alarm about something
completely different from what they claim these
Europan intel agencies are reporting. The IAEA
chief was not talking about current Iranian
activities. He’s referring to what Iran
had done prior to the cessation of its weapons
program back in 2003 and the need for Iran
to come clean about those activities, which of
course it should.
The reality is that Weinthal and Nader
already have a conclusion in mind and they are
in search of evidence to support it. In fact,
they provide a subtle hint that their
presentation is completely bogus when they
complain that these European intel reports “have
gotten relatively little attention from Western
journalists.” Indeed, there’s a reason for that:
most Western journalists’ BS detectors probably
started flashing red when presented with this
information.
Moreover, the “Annual Threat Assessment of
the U.S. Intelligence Community”
issued in April concluded: “We continue to
assess that Iran is not currently undertaking
the key nuclear weapons-development activities
that we judge would be necessary to produce a
nuclear device.”
The bottom line is this article isn’t meant
to present facts in an objective, good faith
manner, but instead its purpose is to provide
another piece of flimsy ammo for opponents of
diplomacy with Iran to get back on the path to
regime change and/or war.