Conventional Weapons Proliferation and the Downing of Flight 17

The world is shocked and horrified by the destruction of a civilian aircraft with 300 people on board over eastern Ukraine, apparently caused by a surface to air missile launched by pro-Russian separatists. Information is obviously still coming in, but it certainly does appear that a sophisticated Russian-made and Russian-supplied missile system was used. This raises the question, still to be determined, of exactly what link exists between the Russian military and the firing of the missile that brought down the aircraft.

In a CNN article today a “senior U.S. official” is quoted as saying:

[T]he responsibility is Russia’s whether they had Russian personnel there or they gave them equipment and an instruction manual.

These separatist leaders are taking orders from Russia and (Russian President Vladimir Putin) has to realize the consequence of sending heavy and sophisticated weapons to a gang of sociopaths, extremists, violent thugs, nationalists and agents who are just given weapons and told to make chaos.

That sounds about right to me. And it has echoes in other cases of sophisticated conventional weapons being supplied to poorly trained, questionably responsible fighters in other situations as well.  Immediately to mind came, among other cases, the US supply of weapons to the Mujahideen (later to become the Taliban) in Afghanistan in the 1980’s, and the much more recent US supply of conventional arms to the Iraqi army, many of which were left on the battlefields of northern Iraq when the soldiers disrobed themselves and fled, and were picked up by the advancing ISIS fighters, who are now using them to wreak havoc in Syria.

Perhaps all cautionary tales about irresponsible proliferation of conventional weapons.

More Right-Headedness on PMD

. . . from Greg Thielmann in this op-ed in Reuters today:

Though discussions between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) are proceeding in parallel to the six-power nuclear negotiations with Iran, some argue that Tehran must “come clean” on past military experiments before it can be trusted to make new commitments. But reaching and implementing a nuclear agreement should not be held hostage to resolving all the complicated questions about the possible military dimensions of Iran’s past nuclear programs.

I’m following the news on the negotiations like everyone else, and at the moment it doesn’t seem to be looking good for reaching a comprehensive agreement by this weekend. In fact it appears that there is a resignation among the negotiators to opt for an extension of the current interim agreement, and come back to the negotiating table in August or September.

I don’t have a whole lot that’s original to add to the reams of commentary about what should happen here. I’m glad to see some people criticizing the P5+1 for their misplaced focus on denying Iran “breakout capability.”  Paul Pillar and Steve Walt have written very good pieces on this recently. I think the P5+1 negotiators should take their advice and not press for unrealistic limits on Iran’s enrichment capability.

I think the window for making a deal will not last forever, and that Iran has already given a lot by way of concessions on Arak and its enrichment program. Its time for the P5+1 negotiators to realize that the deal isn’t going to get much better, and that not making a deal could result in missing this fleeting opportunity altogether.

ABA Journal Seeking Nominations for Best Legal Blogs

If you recall, ACL was included in the ABA Journal’s list of 100 best legal blogs for 2013. A great recognition, and much appreciated.

The ABA Journal has now sent out its call for nominations for the same list for 2014.  If you would like to nominate/support ACL for this recognition, please do so at this link.  Thanks in advance.

RMI Nuclear Weapons ICJ Case Revisited: Causes for Concern

Readers will know that I wrote back in April about the surprise cases filed by the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) against all nine states possessing nuclear weapons.  There have recently been some procedural updates, setting dates for the filing of memorials, and a response by India on jurisdictional grounds.

As I’ve learned more about the case, and particularly about the lawyers who are representing the RMI, I have become increasingly concerned about the prospects for this case as a strong challenge to the nuclear weapons possessing states on the basis of NPT Article VI.

If you look at the people who are on the RMI legal team, and particularly those who have been on it from the beginning and, as I understand it, played a leading role in persuading the RMI to bring the case, you will see that they are mostly anti-nuclear activists connected to a number of NGO’s, including the Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy, and the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.  You can see a listing of them here.  My concern about this is having the RMI’s legal case led by people who certainly feel passionately about the issue of nuclear disarmament, but who are not themselves real experts in nuclear disarmament law.  Some of them write a lot about it, but mostly in activist circles and outlets, and not in serious, scholarly places.

A number of these people were intimately involved in bringing the infamous 1996 advisory case to the ICJ on the threat or use of nuclear weapons. As I teach my students every year, that case was doomed to a disastrous judgment from the start, because of the badly crafted legal question certified to the court in the first place. Basically, bad lawyering put the Court in a bind and ultimately produced the advisory opinion which has been so roundly criticized in legal scholarly circles.

What I’m afraid of is that, because the RMI case is being led by a lot of the same people, who are passionate activists for nuclear disarmament but not real experts in nuclear disarmament law themselves, a similar result will occur in this case of incompetent legal argument leading to a judgment that is either useless or, much worse, allows those on the ICJ from the nuclear weapons states to take advantage of the weak arguments of the RMI legal team, to influence the rendering of a judgment that will interpret NPT Article VI so broadly and weakly that the judgment will become an impediment to the nuclear disarmament movement. That really concerns me.

And looking at the RMI’s complaint against the UK filed with the Court in April – one of the few cases that is actually likely to go forward to the merits – unfortunately provides support for my concern. You can see it here.  Far too much reliance on the marginal dictum (and that’s what it was) from the 1996 advisory opinion about NPT Article VI, and not nearly enough substantive analysis of the law.  If the RMI legal team doesn’t step up its game significantly in the memorials, and in oral argument, the UK FCO lawyers are going to take them apart on the interpretation of Article VI.

I’ve written a lot on the subject of NPT Article VI, and so I have a significant professional investment in seeing any case on the subject at the ICJ argued well and brought to a positive conclusion, with a strong judgment by the Court interpreting Article VI as a provision with substance, which it is.

When activists with passion but little substantive expertise convince a state to bring a case to the ICJ in order to try and move their agenda forward, it’s an inauspicious beginning to what I fear will be yet another badly lawyered nuclear weapons case before the ICJ.

New Cases by the EU General Court Striking Down Iran Sanctions Listings

I just wanted to draw attention to several cases recently decided by the EU General Court in which EU sanctions against designated individuals and businesses allegedly connected to Iran’s nuclear program have been annulled.  These are just the latest in a growing line of cases in both the EU General Court and the European Court of Justice reaching similar decisions regarding EU sanctions targeting Iran’s nuclear program, which are essentially attempts to implement UN Security Council sanctions against Iran. I’ve written about this issue before on a couple of occasions.  The EU Sanctions Blog has a great run down of the three recent cases here, here and here.  I’m particularly pleased to note that the Sharif University of Technology was represented in its case by my friend Matthew Happold.  See the text of the court’s judgment in this case here.  Congratulations to Matt and to the University.

In terms of the legal merits of these cases, they really are just a continuation of the same bases on which earlier cases in this line have been decided. Basically the EU courts are requiring the EU and state governments to provide evidence on which the sanctions are based, and the governments involved are refusing to do so. Thus, as a basic matter of due process, the court has decided that the sanctions cannot stand on a lack of proffered evidence.  A very sound holding in my view.

Hopefully, of course, the current round of P5+1 negotiations with Iran will produce a comprehensive agreement before the July 20 deadline, and this will lead to these EU sanctions being repealed, as part of a normalization of relations between Iran and the West.  I think it is reasonable to expect that both the UN Security Council and the EU will be willing and able to withdraw the sanctions they have imposed against Iran over the past ten years, pursuant to such a comprehensive diplomatic agreement (as long as the US administration chooses to at least not veto such a decision by the UNSC). I have just about zero confidence, however, that the US government will be able to implement meaningful sanctions relief promised under such a comprehensive agreement.  As I’ve said before, I think the biggest impediment to implementing a comprehensive agreement between Iran and the West over Iran’s nuclear program is the US Congress.

Jeffrey Lewis on Japan and Nuclear Weapons

I’ve just gotten around to reading Jeffrey Lewis’ most recent FP piece on Japan and the periodic worries about Japan’s potential interest in, and capability to build, a nuclear weapons arsenal of its own.

I don’t have any particular problem with his analysis in the piece. I suspect he’s right in his conclusion that Japan will not decide to build their own nuclear weapons arsenal anytime soon, for the cultural and political reasons on which he mostly relies. He observes that most of the pro-NW rhetoric in Japan is politically marginal, that public sentiment in Japan is not in favor of nuclear weaponization, given particularly Japan’s terrible history as a victim of nuclear weapons use. And he gives Japan the benefit of the doubt that if they ever do decide to build nuclear weapons, they’ll do so in an open and transparent way. (Just like they did at Pearl Harbor.)

I just wanted to comment quickly on how different this holistic and circumspect analysis is from Lewis’ own analysis, and from that of many of his buddies in the US nonproliferation “expert” establishment (e.g. David Albright), on the potential for other countries to decide to construct their own nuclear weapons arsenals, and in particular Iran. See, for example, Lewis’ other recent FP piece on why we shouldn’t focus on “breakout time” on the basis of known centrifuge capability in Iran, as a meaningful indication of whether and when Iran might “go nuclear.” With regard to Iran’s potential future decision to build a nuclear weapons arsenal Lewis says:

What Khamenei is more likely to do, if he decides that nuclear weapons are no longer un-Islamic, is to order the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to build a covert facility with technology from the civil program. You know, like Iran did at Natanz before 2002, and near Qom before 2010. A covert facility would provide Iran with a significant and steady supply of highly enriched uranium. With a little luck for the Iranians, this approach would present the United States and its partners with a fait accompli — one where we don’t know how much highly enriched uranium they have or where it’s made. That’s what the North Koreans are doing now, having wised up about the limited value of a plutonium production infrastructure housed in very large reactors and a reprocessing building that are easily identified and targeted.

Let me put this simply: Even if the Iranians build a bomb, they are likely to pretend for a prolonged time that they haven’t. Imposing limits on the number, capability, or operation of Iran’s centrifuges is a fool’s errand. It is far more important to win concessions on verification and access to Iran’s nuclear program.

Do you see a difference in tone and assumptions here? No holistic analysis of Iran’s history as a victim of WMD use itself, or of its relations with the West and its neighbors, and why it did not disclose the Natanz and Qom facilities. No consideration of internal Iranian politics in a circumspect way. No thoughtful analysis of the international relations calculus that Iran will likely rationally make.

The analysis is superficial and suspicious. The assumption is that Iran wants nuclear weapons, and will likely be devious in obtaining them.

This double standard of analysis and assumption just really stood out to me in this instance. But it’s a thread running through most of the rhetoric concerning Iran’s nuclear program in Washington DC, and through the writings of the US nonproliferation expert community. It’s so ingrained by now, I’m not sure they even see it anymore.

Right-Headedness on the PMD Issue Apparently Prevailing

I was pleased to see this NYT article by David Sanger, which seems to indicate that a pragmatic and prudent approach to the PMD issue is prevailing in the negotiations between Iran and the P5+1/IAEA on Iran’s nuclear program. Quoting from the piece:

American negotiators seem to be steering away from forcing a full historical accounting from the Iranians before any accord is signed, arguing that excavating the past is less important than assuring Iran does not have the raw material to make a weapon. And the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Yukiya Amano, said in an interview last week that no one should expect a complete historical accounting.

“It is not possible to find out everything,” said Mr. Amano, a former Japanese diplomat who is trying, as his predecessor did, to work methodically through a list of a dozen areas that he calls “possible military dimensions” of the Iranian program.

As I’ve written before, this is a welcome development, and the negotiators from the West should be complimented for it (never thought you’d hear me say that, did you?). The basic philosophy underlying it, with which I very much agree, is that what is most important now is to come to an agreement among the parties about the present and future, in order to reduce tensions and begin the process of normalizing relations between Iran and the West, both politically and economically. And that stressing investigation into past possible military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear work will only make such a comprehensive agreement impossible.  A very practical position that correctly apportions emphasis, in my view.

There are many, including notably David Albright, who have insisted, and continue to insist, that a full reckoning of Iran’s possible weaponization R&D in the past must precede any comprehensive agreement.  This is entirely impractical, as well as unnecessary, and seems calculated to keep a diplomatic accord from ever happening. I’m pleased that P5+1 negotiators have not listened to such voices on this issue.

India Finally Ratifies its Additional Protocol, but Does it Mean Anything?

Last week, our friend Robert Kelley, along with Brian Cloughley, published a report for IHS Janes in which they reviewed and analyzed information about a possible new uranium hexafluoride plant at the Indian Rare Metals Plant (IRMP) near Mysore, India.

Toward the end of the report (which is damned difficult to locate in full text online, by the way, and is also paywall protected) the authors addressed the relevance to this discovery of India’s Additional Protocol with the IAEA:

The divergence between Mysore and the usual level of publicly available information on India’s nuclear programme may have its roots in two international agreements. The first is between India and the IAEA, the second between India and the United States. . .

Neither India, Pakistan, nor Israel have signed the NPT, nor agreed to the 1972-era voluntary agreements. India signed a version of the Additional Protocol in 2009, but never brought it into force. This Additional Protocol does not follow the Model Protocol that other non-nuclear weapons states sign and has no provisions for site access.

In 2008, India agreed to another set of constraints under a special agreement brokered by the US; the 123 Agreement, which governs nuclear co-operation between the US and India. This reaffirms that India is to declare its civil nuclear facilities but not necessarily its military facilities. This agreement allows both parties to enrich uranium up to 20%, but does not explicitly prevent India enriching uranium to higher levels to obtain HEU.

This seems at odds with the wider US nonproliferation agenda, which has aggressively sought to prohibit higher enrichments and repatriate any HEU to the country of origin. . .

On India’s IAEA agreements, in diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks in 2011, the US mission to international organisations in Vienna expressed concern that “the [Indian] Additional Protocol does not go as far as even Russia’s or China’s”, which are already exceptionally weak. The US Congress’s stipulation that the 123 Agreement must be contingent on India completing an “Additional Protocol” is subverted because it is not a “Model Additional Protocol”, and is a very weak one. Moreover, it has not yet been ratified, so is not even officially in force. . .

Notably, the Mysore enrichment plant is not a declared facility for either set of agreements. This is perhaps why India keeps its enrichment plant plans so secret. It only needs to declare civilian facilities, and by not declaring Mysore as a nuclear facility at all, New Delhi is making a tacit admission that it may have a military purpose, such as enriching uranium for nuclear submarine reactors or second stages in thermonuclear bombs.

Despite apparently going against the spirit of the 123 Agreement, India is still formally in compliance with its international commitments, and Washington can claim ignorance of any suspected enrichment in excess of 20%. The secrecy of Mysore is therefore driven by a need to not bring attention to breaking the spirit of the 123 Agreement, and furthermore it exploits the old IAEA agreements that limit powers of inspection.

This is pretty explosive stuff, if you’ll pardon the pun. From the announcement of the US-India nuclear partnership in 2005, through the negotiation of the 123 agreement in 2008, and in that same year as the issue of a waiver for the partnership was before the Nuclear Suppliers Group, India promised over and over again to sign and ratify an Additional Protocol with the IAEA.

It turns out that until this week, they had not followed through on that promise, and it further appears that the Kelley and Cloughley report, which was widely reported in the media, had something to do with scaring them into finally doing it – making the connection as it did to the US 123 and possible endangerment of US-India nuclear trade.

Indeed, it was widely reported yesterday that India has now sent an instrument of ratification of an Additional Protocol to the IAEA, which should bring the agreement finally into force.

But recall the February 27, 2009 US diplomatic cable released by Wikileaks, which Kelley and Cloughley referenced above. You can see the cable here, and here is a longer excerpt from it:

The IAEA has added to the Board agenda for next week an Additional Protocol (AP) for India. The document was circulated for Member State consideration mid-day Thursday, 26 February. The draft text basically contains an obligation to provide limited reporting on exports to non nuclear weapons states (NNWS). It does not even go as far as the AP’s for Russia and China, the weakest among NWS, and is viewed in the Safeguards Department and the Office of the Legal Advisor as setting a bad precedent for not only Pakistan, but Brazil.

So it’s really questionable whether India’s new AP – now that it actually is in force as a legal source – is really of any marginal advantage to the safeguards regime between India and the IAEA. A friend has referred to the new India AP as a “Mickey Mouse” AP, that really should not be considered to constitute a proper Additional Protocol, on par with those signed and ratified by NPT NNWS.

I have obtained a copy of India’s new Additional Protocol agreement, and the IAEA BOG discussion approving it. I will insert links to both documents below. You can then compare the India AP to the Model Additional Protocol document (INFCIRC/540) that all NPT NNWS are encouraged to sign by the IAEA in its entirety. You can see the Model AP here.

Indias IAEA AP BOG Discussion

Indias IAEA AP

Did Japan Violate its Safeguards Obligations through Failure to Report Plutonium?

Last week media outlets were abuzz with news that Japan had failed to report about 645kg of plutonium to the IAEA. Naturally, this freaked everybody out, not least Japan’s neighbor China.

It’s taken me a while to get around to addressing this topic. I was out of town for a couple of weeks, and in that time I’ve talked to a number of people about the subject to try and understand it as best I can.

I want to start out by recognizing that I’m still not 100% sure that I understand everything here, so I’m going to style this post as a first foray into the issue, and invite people to comment if they can clarify things. This includes some of the involved technical issues that I frankly don’t have the technical competency to understand.

But as regards Japan’s safeguards obligations with the IAEA, this is what I think the situation is.  The amount of plutonium in question apparently was declared to the IAEA in the general terms of, and in a manner satisfying, Japan’s obligations under its CSA and AP with the IAEA.

The failure to report has to do only with the INFCIRC/549 regime, and its reporting guidelines.  The INFCIRC/549 regime is an additional, voluntary regime adopted among the five declared NW states plus Belgium, Japan, Switzerland, and Germany, and communicated to the IAEA, for the purpose of increasing the level of detail with which self-reports are made with regard to stocks of civil plutonium.

Here’s how the IPFM blog described it:

Japan misreported some of its plutonium in two recent INFCIRC/549 declarations that described the status of its civilian plutonium stock as of 31 December 2011 and 31 December 2012.

The declarations, that draw on the annual Japan Atomic Energy Commission reports “The Current Situation of Plutonium Management in Japan” reported that Japan had 4.5 tonnes of plutonium in unirradiated MOX fuel. According to the Current Situation report, this number included 959 kg of fresh MOX fuel at power plants. This number, however, did not take into account the 640 kg of fresh MOX fuel that was loaded in Genkai #3 reactor on March 9-12, 2011. Since the reactor never went operational, the fuel was still unirradiated, but was not accounted for in any of the categories of the Current Situation report (or INFCIRC/549). It was removed from the reactor in March 2013 and may be again reported in Japan’s 2013 INFCIRC/549 declaration.

The discrepancy was reported by Masafumi Takubo, a member of the International Panel on Fissile Materials, who reported it at Kakujoho, a nuclear information website.

The conclusion that the under-reporting was only with regard to the voluntary INFCIRC/549 regime, and not with regard to Japan’s core safeguards obligations under its CSA and AP, is supported by this statement from IAEA Spokesman Gill Tudor:

The IAEA confirms that Japan has submitted to the IAEA all safeguards-related information under its safeguards agreement.  Accordingly, all nuclear materials in all nuclear facilities in Japan are under IAEA safeguards, including material at the Genkai NPP. The IAEA also confirms that there has been no diversion of the nuclear materials.

The submission of plutonium stock reports to the IAEA is undertaken based on a voluntary arrangement among countries concerned (see below links). The IAEA cannot comment on what should be reported because it is up to those countries to decide.

The links to the “Guidelines for the Management of Plutonium” (including reporting format) are:

http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Infcircs/1998/infcirc549.pdf

http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Infcircs/2009/infcirc549m1.pdf

The links to the recent communications from Japan to the IAEA are:

2012: http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Infcircs/2012/infcirc549a1-15.pdf

2013 (latest): http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Infcircs/2013/infcirc549a1-16.pdf

So again, if the question is did Japan violate its safeguards obligations through failure to report this 645kg of plutonium to the IAEA, I think the answer has to be no, because Japan did apparently report this material in the manner required by its CSA and AP.  There was simply an alleged underreporting of the material per the stipulations of the INFCIRC/549 regime, which is not itself the source of a legal obligation, as far as I can tell.

Concluding that Japan did not violate its legal obligations in this matter does not, of course, mean that there was nothing that happened here that shouldn’t have happened. The INFCIRC/549 regime is an important part of the overall IAEA system for transparency regarding plutonium.

I think a number of points of critique of both the Japan and the IAEA system can be made arising from this case, and commenters are certainly welcome to do so.

I know that one of the questions percolating out there with regard to this case is, inasmuch as Japan is one of the countries regarding which the IAEA has adopted a “broader conclusion” – basically the IAEA’s highest blessing of safeguards compliance – what sorts of deviations from safeguards best practices would or should merit a rolling back of the broader conclusion? Such a demotion from a broader conclusion has never happened before, and it’s unclear under what conditions it would happen.

I would add that since the broader conclusion procedure is completely an invention of the IAEA, and finds no textual support in either the CSA or the AP, there are therefore no legal criteria to use, either for bestowal of the broader conclusion blessing, or for its removal. As with so much of IAEA practice, the Agency’s procedures and modus operandi have become so far removed from what is actually in the Agency’s foundational legal sources, they are, to use a technical phrase, really just making this shit up as they go.

Anyway, I’ll stop there and open up for comments.

What is the Quality of Scientific Evidence Against Iran?

I’m very pleased to be hosting another guest post by friend of ACL Dr. Yousaf Butt.  We often turn to Yousaf to help us understand the technical/scientific questions which are involved in debates concerning Iran’s nuclear program in particular.  Although the legal debates about Iran are not taking place in an international court – at least not yet – the veracity of the scientific evidence espoused by all sides to support their legal arguments is nevertheless an extremely important matter, particularly in light of the debacle of the 2003 Iraq war having been based, at least in part, on bad technical and scientific analysis of intelligence information on similar questions.

What is the Quality of Scientific Evidence Against Iran?

By: Yousaf Butt

Dr. Yousaf Butt, a nuclear physicist, is director of the Emerging Technologies Program at the Cultural Intelligence Institute, a non-profit dedicated to promoting fact-based cultural awareness among individuals, institutions, and governments. The views expressed here are his own.

This week the P5+1 and Iranian officials meet again to try to narrow differences over a comprehensive nuclear deal, which is to last for an as-yet unknown duration. Reaching an agreement will be a challenging task because Iran and P5+1 seem to disagree – among other things – about the enrichment capacity Iran should be allowed during the (unknown) term of the comprehensive deal.

According to the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) limits on Iran’s enrichment capacity are important because they would lengthen the time needed for Iran to “breakout” and quickly enrich uranium to weapons-grade in any hypothetical race to a uranium-based device.

But Jeffrey Lewis of the Monterey Institute has suggested that such limits are meaningless, saying, “This is completely wrong. Breakout is precisely the wrong measure of whether a deal is successful,” because the Iranians – goes the argument – could use a covert facility to breakout if they wanted to do that.

Instead, intensive verification and intrusive inspections above and beyond what is codified in international law by the so-called “Additional Protocol” have been suggested to try to address this fear.

Amid this debate within the nonproliferation community, Gareth Porter last week poked a hornet’s nest by suggesting that key evidence against Iran was fabricated and distributed by Iran’s adversaries Israel and the MEK group.

This is not the first time someone has claimed that forged evidence was being used by the IAEA in its case against Iran: highly respected experts have warned about this before.

In a separate report last week, Mr. Porter assesses that David Albright, the founder and executive director of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) in Washington, DC, a prominent commentator on nonproliferation and Iran’s nuclear program has embraced an alarmist line on the Iran issue – despite his knowledge that there were serious problems with the evidence on which it was based.

My intention here isn’t to evaluate the specific items of evidence presented in Mr. Porter’s reports but to weigh in with my own expert analysis –  some of it done in collaboration with Dr. Ferenc Dalnoki-Veress of the Monterey Institute – of the quality of the evidence against Iran.

By way of context, Iran has never been formally accused of manufacturing nuclear weapons. The IAEA did determine that Iran was in “non-compliance” with its safeguards agreement in 2005. But this had to do with technical nuclear material accountancy matters — “non-compliance” does not mean Iran was making nuclear weapons. For example, South Korea and Egypt both violated their safeguards agreements in 2004 and 2005. But these U.S. allies were never even referred to the UN Security Council — let alone targeted for sanctions. Pierre Goldschmidt, a former deputy director of safeguards at the IAEA, has noted the “danger of setting bad precedents based on arbitrary criteria or judgments informed by political considerations” at the IAEA.

It is not always easy to obtain access to the actual evidence being used against Iran, but occasionally some is leaked to the press and is amenable to scientific scrutiny. Below, I list some of this evidence being used against Iran, as well some historical record of the group(s) making the allegations:

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