By Mark W. Hughes March 2006
Infoshop News (news.infoshop.org)
With the US moving ever closer to a military attack targeting Iran, the Iranian nuclear program is the subject of much discussion and debate among politicians and in the mainstream news media. Ignored in this media coverage and diplomacy is the fact that any Iranian program successfully building nuclear weapons will owe much to the US intelligence community that handed Iran detailed technical blueprints for a nuclear weapon trigger. Just as the pre-war coverage of Iraq's chemical and biological weapons programs conveniently failed to mention that most of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction came from the US and NATO, so too are the inconvenient facts about the history of Iran's nuclear program being hushed up.
The story was revealed by James Risen in his book "State of War", and while the media did report on the NSA spying scandal Risen exposed, the story about the CIA operation targeting (and ultimately possibly assisting) the Iranian nuclear program has largely been ignored in the US press. The only significant attention the story received was on the January 8th edition of "Meet the Press", where Risen was interviewed by Tim Russert. However, that program airs early on Sunday morning, so the audience is relatively limited. The Guardian, a UK newspaper, reported the story on January 5th of this year by Julian Borger, including an excerpt from Risen's book.
Overall, anyone in the US who did not read "State of War" or missed "Meet the Press" has most likely never heard the story, and for that reason this article will now offer a brief description of the events.
In February of 2000, a Russian scientist, at the behest of the CIA, handed to Iran the blueprints for vital components of a nuclear weapon. The Russian, a defector living in the US, was recruited by the CIA as part of Operation MERLIN, an attempt to learn more about Iran's nuclear program and at the same time throw the program off course.
The plan involved giving Iran the designs for a Russian TBA 480 high-voltage block, also known as a "firing set", which causes an implosion to trigger a chain reaction in a nuclear core. The CIA altered the designs to include a flaw, assuming Iran would not notice the error. However, after he was asked to take the blueprints to Vienna and give them to Iran's representative at the International Atomic Energy Agency headquarters, the Russian noticed the intentional flaw in the designs. In fact, the flaw was so obvious he noticed it within minutes during his first viewing of the blueprints.
The Russian scientist delivered the blueprints to the Iranian mission in Vienna as he was instructed to do by the CIA, but he also gave the Iranians a personal note informing them of the design flaw and offering to help them correct the error -- although it is currently unknown whether he was ever contacted by the Iranians again. However, the Iranians had previously acquired advanced technical information and assistance for their nuclear program from, among other nations, Pakistan. It is, therefore, highly probable that even without the Russian's assistance, Iranian technicians would be able to find and correct the obvious flaw in the otherwise detailed and highly valuable blueprints.
The CIA case officer in charge of the operation became concerned that the CIA had inadvertently handed over information that would enable Iran to become a nuclear power, and he went to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and informed them.
The passing of nuclear technology to a non-nuclear state is, obviously, a violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to which the US is a signatory nation. Besides violating this international treaty, the CIA's actions also violated US law similarly restricting passing such information to other states. Despite this, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence apparently took no action whatsoever, and the facts remained a secret until they were revealed to James Risen by a source at the CIA.
In response to Risen's book, the CIA issued a statement simultaneously denying the validity of the story while also denouncing its revelation as "an unfathomable and sad disregard for national security."
Another CIA official, quoted anonymously in the Guardian article, asserted that there are numerous other occasions when the CIA intervened in Iran's nuclear program. The official claims the agency several times learned of shipments of nuclear equipment to Iran, and rather than revealing it publicly and/or trying to stop the shipments, the CIA "fiddled with the equipment…before it got to Iran." Here again we see the US intelligence community taking it upon themselves to influence global proliferation of nuclear weapons, carrying out de facto foreign policy that could have deadly results for the rest of the world.
These startling revelations have had practically no impact on the US media's coverage of Iran's nuclear program, and certainly no impact on US or European policy and so-called "diplomacy" to resolve the current crisis over the Iranian program. Any honest and legitimate analysis of the Iranian nuclear program should include consideration of the facts regarding the role of US intelligence agents in supplying Iran with the components and technical plans for nuclear weapons in violation of international treaty obligations and US federal law, and the lack of any action by elected US government officials once they were fully informed of what had happened. It is, however, doubtful that any such honest and legitimate analysis will take place either in the mainstream media or in the discussions among government officials, if history tells us anything.
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