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It seems that on one had, the Iran hawks like to exaggerate Iran’s nuclear capabilities in order to emphasize the “threat from Iran” – but the same people like to downplay Iran’s accomplishments in order to undercut the argument that “they already have the capability anyway so we should compromise” – thus leading to some confusion.
In any case, equating an Iranian capbility to enrich uranium with actually building a nuclear weapons is misleading and disingenuious. If they were the same thing, then Brazil and Argentina are now nuclear-armed states too.
Much is made of the IAEA’s statement that it is
“unable to conclude that Iran’s nuclear programme was exclusively peaceful.”
The IAEA remains unable to draw such a conclusion, since the IAEA certifies the absence of undeclared nuclear materials or activities only for countries that have ratified the Additional Protocol. According to the IAEA’s Annual Safeguards Implementation Report of 2004, of the 61 states where both the NPT safeguards and the Additional protocol are implemented, the IAEA has certified the absence of undeclared nuclear activity for only 21 countries, leaving Iran (which had implemented though not ratified the AP) in the same category as 40 other countries including Canada, the Czech Republic, and South Africa:
“With regard to 21 States with both CSAs and APs in
force or otherwise applied, the Agency concluded that
all nuclear material in those States remained in
peaceful nuclear activities. For 40 other such States,
the Agency had not yet completed the necessary
evaluations, and could therefore only draw the
conclusion that the nuclear material placed under
safeguards remained in peaceful nuclear activities.”
( SOURCE:
http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Reports/Anrep2004/safeguards.pdf)
— hass · May 24, 02:07 PM ·