Yesterday, my cynicism got the better of me. I expressed doubt that anyone in the press compared the two IAEA reports, concluding that someone in either the IAEA or one of the missions was putting a little pressure on the Iranians. I was wrong.
One of the reporters has contacted me to clarify that it was the press that first raised the question of the discrepancy in a conference call with “UN officials” after having compared the current report and the previous one; and that it was only then that the “UN officials” explained and explicitly acknowledged the underestimate. (Unless you count what the reporter called “the gnomic reference” in the report to “measurement uncertainties” as an explicit acknowledgment.)
The reporter thinks, and I agree, that it is important to understand on this most conspiracy-prone of subjects that this was not a question of someone somewhere deciding to put a little extra pressure on the Iranians. The reporter noted that, for me to imply otherwise, was “not lousy reporting but less than perfect blogging.”
I have to agree.