Le journal Le Monde met en avant de nouvelles données
d'information sur la dimension militaire du programme nucléaire iranien,
données qui remettraient en cause les estimations des services secrets
américains selon lesquelles la composante militaire du programme nucléaire
iranien aurait été abandonnée en 2003.
L'AIEA détient des preuves que l'Iran a mené un
programme nucléaire militaire après 2003
LE MONDE 01.03.08
"Les experts de l'Agence internationale de l'énergie atomique (AIEA), bras
de l'ONU chargé de vérifier le respect des normes de non-prolifération,
détiennent des documents indiquant que l'Iran a mené des travaux sur
l'élaboration d'une ogive nucléaire et que ces efforts se sont poursuivis
au-delà de l'année 2003, contrairement à ce qu'ont affirmé les agences de
renseignement américaines en décembre 2007.
Ces éléments ont été exposés pour la première fois dans le détail, le 25
février, par le directeur général adjoint de l'AIEA, le Finlandais Olli
Heinonen, lors d'une présentation à huis clos devant des représentants des
missions étrangères auprès du siège de l'Agence, à Vienne...
...La présentation de M. Heinonen a suscité une vive colère du représentant
iranien, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, présent lors de la réunion. Ce dernier a parlé
d'une falsification des documents et d'une tentative américaine de saborder la
coopération entre l'Iran et l'AIEA. L'exposé portait sur trois projets iraniens
: la conversion de dioxyde d'uranium (Green Salt Project), des études sur des
explosifs de haute intensité et la mise au point d'un corps de rentrée de
missile. Des documents ont été montrés sur des travaux portant sur des systèmes
de mise à feu à haute tension et des détonateurs multiples pouvant se
déclencher simultanément..."
Lire aussi :
L'AIEA détaille la "possible dimension militaire"
des travaux nucléaires de l'Iran
LE MONDE 23.02.08
Information ou désinformation ? Les données mises en avant par le
journal Le Monde sont récurrentes, pour être déjà apparues en 2004, et prêtent
pour le moins à interrogation.
Iran Nuke Laptop Data Came from Terror Group
By Gareth Porter, WASHINGTON, Feb 29 (IPS)
"The George W. Bush administration has long pushed the "laptop documents" --
1,000 pages of technical documents supposedly from a stolen Iranian laptop --
as hard evidence of Iranian intentions to build a nuclear weapon. Now charges
based on those documents pose the only remaining obstacles to the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) declaring that Iran has resolved all unanswered
questions about its nuclear programme.
But those documents have long been regarded with great suspicion by U.S. and
foreign analysts. German officials have identified the source of the laptop
documents in November 2004 as the Mujahideen e Khalq (MEK), which along with
its political arm, the National Council of Resistance in Iran (NCRI), is listed
by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist organisation.
There are some indications, moreover, that the MEK obtained the documents
not from an Iranian source but from Israel's Mossad.
In its latest report on Iran, circulated Feb. 22, the IAEA, under strong
pressure from the Bush administration, included descriptions of plans for a
facility to produce "green salt", technical specifications for high explosives
testing and the schematic layout of a missile reentry vehicle that appears
capable of holding a nuclear weapon. Iran has been asked to provide full
explanations for these alleged activities.
Tehran has denounced the documents on which the charges are based as
fabrications provided by the MEK, and has demanded copies of the documents to
analyse, but the United States had refused to do so.
The Iranian assertion is supported by statements by German officials. A few
days after then Secretary of State Colin Powell announced the laptop documents,
Karsten Voight, the coordinator for German-American relations in the German
Foreign Ministry, was reported by the Wall Street Journal Nov. 22, 2004 as
saying that the information had been provided by "an Iranian dissident
group".
A German official familiar with the issue confirmed to this writer that the
NCRI had been the source of the laptop documents. "I can assure you that the
documents came from the Iranian resistance organisation," the source said.
The Germans have been deeply involved in intelligence collection and
analysis regarding the Iranian nuclear programme. According to a story by
Washington Post reporter Dafna Linzer soon after the laptop documents were
first mentioned publicly by Powell in late 2004, U.S. officials said they had
been stolen from an Iranian whom German intelligence had been trying to
recruit, and had been given to intelligence officials of an unnamed country in
Turkey.
The German account of the origins of the laptop documents contradicts the
insistence by unnamed U.S. intelligence officials who insisted to journalists
William J. Broad and David Sanger in November 2005 that the laptop documents
did not come from any Iranian resistance groups.
Despite the fact that it was listed as a terrorist organisation, the MEK was
a favourite of neoconservatives in the Pentagon, who were proposing in
2003-2004 to use it as part of a policy to destabilise Iran. The United States
is known to have used intelligence from the MEK on Iranian military questions
for years. It was considered a credible source of intelligence on the Iranian
nuclear programme after 2002, mainly because of its identification of the
facility in Natanz as a nuclear site.
The German source said he did not know whether the documents were authentic
or not. However, CIA analysts, and European and IAEA officials who were given
access to the laptop documents in 2005 were very sceptical about their
authenticity.
The Guardian's Julian Borger last February quoted an IAEA official as saying
there is "doubt over the provenance of the computer".
A senior European diplomat who had examined the documents was quoted by the
New York Times in November 2005 as saying, "I can fabricate that data. It looks
beautiful, but is open to doubt."
Scott Ritter, the former U.S. military intelligence officer who was chief
United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998, noted in an
interview that the CIA has the capability test the authenticity of laptop
documents through forensic tests that would reveal when different versions of
different documents were created.
The fact that the agency could not rule out the possibility of fabrication,
according to Ritter, indicates that it had either chosen not to do such tests
or that the tests had revealed fraud...
...In her February 2006 report on the laptop documents, the Post's Linzer
said CIA analysts had originally speculated that a "third country, such as
Israel, had fabricated the evidence". They eventually "discounted that theory",
she wrote, without explaining why...
Lire aussi :
Disinformation flies as US raises Iran bar
By Kaveh L Afrasiabi, Asia Times Feb 21, 2008
