The vociferous anti-Iran lobby has jumped on the latest quarterly IAEA report as an excuse to attack the country. But the wild language being used simply exposes the anti-Iran agenda, and has little to do with what is actually happening. The truth is that the IAEA report remains unclear on what Iran has actually done to develop a nuclear weapon.
The IAEA states in very broad terms that it is concerned about "the possible existence in Iran of undisclosed nuclear-related activities involving military-related organisations, including activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile," and that Iran has been working on research for a nuclear bomb to arm one of its long-range missiles.
The IAEA has used very general language which does not name places, times, weaponry, bomb sizes, or anything like that. There is no clear statement that Iran is making nuclear weapons. The 14-page annex to the quarterly report was trailed as having lots of new evidence, but the ‘new' information is based on 1,000 pages of information which US got in 2005 from a laptop taken out of Iran. Despite the IAEA's claims that it has confirmed this data with intelligence sources in 10 other UN member states, this sort of old information is not a detailed statement of what is currently happening in Iran.
The IAEA has a lot more work to do to convince the world at large that its reports are credible, and on an issue as serious as Iran it has to go the extra mile. It is time for all rational people, especially in the Gulf, to take a deep breath and calm down. A military assault on Iran serves no one's purpose, other than those who want to profit from the ensuing confusion and bitterness.
