Details of a CIA sting emerging from a court case in the U.S. may prompt United Nations monitors to reassess some evidence related to Iran\u2019s alleged nuclear weapons work, two western diplomats said.<\/p>\n
International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors in Vienna will soon have to review intelligence they received about Iran as a result of the revelations, said the two diplomats who are familiar with the IAEA\u2019s Iran file and asked not to be named because the details are confidential. The CIA passed doctored blueprints for nuclear-weapon components to Iran in February 2000, trial documents have shown.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis story suggests a possibility that hostile intelligence agencies could decide to plant a \u2018smoking gun\u2019 in Iran for the IAEA to find,\u201d said Peter Jenkins, the U.K.\u2019s former envoy to the Vienna-based agency. \u201cThat looks like a big problem.\u201d<\/p>\n
The UN agency is charged with deciding whether the Iranian government has been trying to develop nuclear weapons and its ruling may determine whether international sanctions against the country are lifted. While Iranian officials have consistently accused the IAEA of basing its case on forged documents, the agency has never acknowledged receiving tampered evidence.<\/p>\n
The CIA documents were filed as evidence to an Alexandria, Virginia court on Jan. 14 for the trial of Jeffrey Sterling, who was convicted of leaking classified information about operations against Iran. Sterling worked on a CIA project aimed at misleading Iranian scientists by feeding modified designs for nuclear-weapons components to the country\u2019s IAEA mission in Austria.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe goal is to plant this substantial piece of deception information on the Iranian nuclear-weapons program, sending them down blind alleys, wasting their time and money,\u201d according to a May 1997 cable submitted to the court.<\/p>\n
The CIA sting shows the kind of tactics that the U.S. and its allies have used against Iran, according to Dan Joyner, a law professor at the University of Alabama.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe falsification of nuclear-related documents is a very real part of such states\u2019 efforts to frustrate Iran\u2019s nuclear program,\u201d said Joyner, who has written extensively on nuclear proliferation risks. \u201cThis revelation highlights the dangers of reliance by the IAEA upon evidence concerning Iran provided to it by third party states whose political agendas are antithetical to Iran.\u201d<\/p>\n
Source: Bloomberg<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Details of a CIA sting emerging from a court case in the U.S. may prompt United Nations monitors to reassess some evidence related to Iran\u2019s alleged nuclear weapons work, two western diplomats said. International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors in Vienna will soon have to review intelligence they received about Iran as a result of the … Continue reading “CIA sting spurs reassesment of Iran’s nuclear”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2961,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,123],"tags":[3678,1235,176,174,175,11065],"class_list":["post-17842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-world","tag-austria","tag-cia","tag-iaea","tag-iran","tag-nuclear","tag-sting"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2961"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17842"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17842\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17843,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17842\/revisions\/17843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}