The first question in last Saturday [12 Nov 2011] night\u2019s Republican debate on foreign policy dealt with Iran, and a newly published report by the International Atomic Energy Agency. The report, which raised renewed concern about the \u201cpossible existence of undeclared nuclear facilities and material in Iran,\u201d struck a darker tone than previous assessments. But it was carefully hedged. On the debate platform, however, any ambiguity was lost. One of the moderators said that the I.A.E.A. report had provided \u201cadditional credible evidence that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapon\u201d and asked what various candidates, upon winning the Presidency, would do to stop Iran. Herman Cain said he would assist those who are trying to overthrow the government. Newt Gingrich said he would co\u00f6rdinate with the Israeli government and maximize covert operations to block the Iranian weapons program. Mitt Romney called the state of Iran\u2019s nuclear program Obama\u2019s \u201cgreatest failing, from a foreign-policy standpoint\u201d and added, \u201cLook, one thing you can know \u2026 and that is if we re\u00eblect Barack Obama Iran will have a nuclear weapon.\u201d The Iranian bomb was a sure thing Saturday night.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been reporting on Iran and the bomb for The New Yorker<\/em> for the past decade, with a focus on the repeatedly inability of the best and the brightest of the Joint Special Operations Command to find definitive evidence of a nuclear-weapons production program in Iran. The goal of the high-risk American covert operations was to find something physical\u2014a \u201csmoking calutron,\u201d as a knowledgeable official once told me<\/a>\u2014to show the world that Iran was working on warheads at an undisclosed site, to make the evidence public, and then to attack and destroy the site.<\/p>\n The Times<\/em> reported, in its lead story<\/a> the day after the report came out, that I.A.E.A. investigators \u201chave amassed a trove of new evidence that, they say, makes a \u2018credible\u2019 case\u201d that Iran may be carrying out nuclear-weapons activities. The newspaper quoted a Western diplomat as declaring that \u201cthe level of detail is unbelievable\u2026. The report describes virtually all the steps to make a nuclear warhead and the progress Iran has achieved in each of those steps. It reads likes a menu.\u201d The Times<\/em> set the tone for much of the coverage. (A second Times<\/em> story<\/a> that day on the I.A.E.A. report noted, more cautiously, that \u201cit is true that the basic allegations in the report are not substantially new, and have been discussed by experts for years.\u201d)<\/p>\n But how definitive, or transformative, were the findings? The I.A.E.A. said it had continued in recent years \u201cto receive, collect and evaluate information relevant to possible military dimensions of Iran\u2019s nuclear program\u201d and, as a result, it has been able \u201cto refine its analysis.\u201d The net effect has been to create \u201cmore concern.\u201d But Robert Kelley, a retired I.A.E.A. director and nuclear engineer who previously spent more than thirty years with the Department of Energy\u2019s nuclear-weapons program, told me that he could find very little new information in the I.A.E.A. report. He noted that hundreds of pages of material appears to come from a single source: a laptop computer, allegedly supplied to the I.A.E.A. by a Western intelligence agency, whose provenance could not be established. Those materials, and others, \u201cwere old news,\u201d Kelley said, and known to many journalists. \u201cI wonder why this same stuff is now considered \u2018new information\u2019 by the same reporters.\u201d<\/p>\n A nuanced assessment of the I.A.E.A. report was published by the Arms Control Association (A.C.A.), a nonprofit whose mission is to encourage public support for effective arms control. The A.C.A. noted that the I.A.E.A. did \u201creinforce what the nonproliferation community has recognized for some times: that Iran engaged in various nuclear weapons development activities until 2003, then stopped many of them, but continued others.\u201d (The American intelligence community reached the same conclusion in a still classified 2007 estimate.) The I.A.E.A.\u2019s report \u201csuggests,\u201d the A.C.A. paper said, that Iran \u201cis working to shorten the timeframe to build the bomb once and if it makes that decision. But it remains apparent that a nuclear-armed Iran is still not imminent nor is it inevitable.\u201d Greg Thielmann, a former State Department and Senate Intelligence Committee analyst who was one of the authors of the A.C.A. assessment, told me, \u201cThere is troubling evidence suggesting that studies are still going on, but there is nothing that indicates that Iran is really building a bomb.\u201d He added, \u201cThose who want to drum up support for a bombing attack on Iran sort of aggressively misrepresented the report.\u201d<\/p>\n Joseph Cirincione, the president of the Ploughshare Fund, a disarmament group, who serves on Hillary Clinton\u2019s International Security Advisory Board, said, \u201cI was briefed on most of this stuff several years ago at the I.A.E.A. headquarters in Vienna. There\u2019s little new in the report. Most of this information is well known to experts who follow the issue.\u201d Cirincione noted that \u201cpost-2003, the report only cites computer modelling and a few other experiments.\u201d (A senior I.A.E.A. official similarly told me, \u201cI was underwhelmed by the information.\u201d)<\/p>\n The report did note that its on-site camera inspection process of Iran\u2019s civilian nuclear enrichment facilities\u2014mandated under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to which Iran is a signatory\u2014\u201ccontinues to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material.\u201d In other words, all of the low enriched uranium now known to be produced inside Iran is accounted for; if highly enriched uranium is being used for the manufacture of a bomb, it would have to have another, unknown source.<\/p>\n The shift in tone at the I.A.E.A. seems linked to a change at the top. The I.A.E.A.\u2019s report had extra weight because the Agency has had a reputation for years as a reliable arbiter on Iran. Mohammed ElBaradei, who retired as the I.A.E.A.\u2019s Director General two years ago, was viewed internationally, although not always in Washington, as an honest broker\u2014a view that lead to the awarding of a Nobel Peace Prize in 2005. ElBaradei\u2019s replacement is Yukiya Amano of Japan. Late last year, a classified U.S. Embassy cable from Vienna, the site of the I.A.E.A. headquarters, described Amano as being \u201cready for prime time.\u201d According to the cable<\/a>, which was obtained by WikiLeaks, in a meeting in September, 2009, with Glyn Davies, the American permanent representative to the I.A.E.A., said, \u201cAmano reminded Ambassador on several occasions that he would need to make concessions to the G-77 [the group of developing countries], which correctly required him to be fair-minded and independent, but that he was solidly in the U.S. court on every strategic decision, from high-level personnel appointments to the handling of Iran\u2019s alleged nuclear weapons program.\u201d The cable added that Amano\u2019s \u201cwillingness to speak candidly with U.S. interlocutors on his strategy \u2026 bodes well for our future relationship.\u201d<\/p>\n It is possible, of course, that Iran has simply circumvented the reconnaissance efforts of America and the I.A.E.A., perhaps even building Dick Cheney\u2019s nightmare: a hidden underground nuclear-weapons fabrication facility. Iran\u2019s track record with the I.A.E.A. has been far from good: its leadership began construction of its initial uranium facilities in the nineteen-eighties without informing the Agency, in violation of the nonproliferation treaty. Over the next decade and a half, under prodding from ElBaradei and the West, the Iranians began acknowledging their deceit and opened their enrichment facilities, and their records, to I.A.E.A. inspectors.<\/p>\n The new report, therefore, leaves us where we\u2019ve been since 2002, when George Bush declared Iran to be a member of the Axis of Evil\u2014with lots of belligerent talk but no definitive evidence of a nuclear-weapons program.<\/p>\n _______________________<\/p>\n Seymour M. Hersh wrote his first piece for The New Yorker in 1971 and has been a regular contributor to the magazine since 1993. His journalism and publishing awards include a Pulitzer Prize, five George Polk Awards, two National Magazine Awards, and more than a dozen other prizes for investigative reporting. In 2004, Hersh exposed the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in a series of pieces in the magazine.<\/em><\/p>\n