US scientists debunk latest leaked 'evidence' of Iran's weapons work


The latest in a series of leaks purporting to show Iran's efforts to design a nuclear warhead emerged this week in the form of an Associated Press exclusive about a diagram of the blast dynamics of a bomb said to be three times the size of the one that destroyed Hiroshima.

The report said that the leak came from 'a country critical of Iran's atomic programme', which it does not name, but it quotes a senior diplomat 'considered neutral' on the Iranian nuclear issue as confirming that the diagram was cited in a critical IAEA report last November, which laid out the evidence of the 'possible military dimensions' of the Iranian programme.

However, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the house magazine of US nuclear physicists has put out an analysis of the graph saying it contains a 'massive error, which is unlikely to have been made by research scientists working at a national level'.

According to the two authors, Yousaf Butt and Ferenc Dalnoki-Veress, the two curves on the graph, showing the relationship between energy and peak power 'features a nearly million-fold error', adding:
This diagram does nothing more than indicate either slipshod analysis or an amateurish hoax.
In any case, the level of scientific sophistication needed to produce such a graph corresponds to that typically found in graduate- or advanced undergraduate-level nuclear physics courses.
Apart from raising questions about the wisdom of publishing leaked documents on this subject from countries with big axes to grind, the Bulletin's critique raises more questions about the IAEA November report and the strength of the analysis underpinning it. Critics of the agency, like former inspector Bob Kelley, have claimed that the safeguards department lacks sufficient expertise in weaponry to make critical judgements.

If this diagram is really from the November report, and really is this shoddy, it would raise more questions, remembering that this particular judgement helped trigger the EU oil embargo and new US sanctions.

This article was written by Julian Borger for the Guardian on Thursday November 29, 2012. Julian Borger is the Guardian's diplomatic editor. He was previously a correspondent in the US, the Middle East, eastern Europe and the Balkans.

 

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