U.S. Receives Damaging IAEA Report On Iran (nuclear)

WASHINGTON [MENL] -- The United States has received what it termed a damaging report by the International Atomic Energy Agency regarding Iran's nuclear program.

The report was said to have detailed Iran's failure to disclose all aspects of its nuclear program. The IAEA said that Iran concealed the import of nuclear material as well as the construction of uranium processing facilities.

"We think this report can provide important insights into the nature of the Iranian nuclear program and the problems that exist concerning Iran's safeguard obligations," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said in a briefing on Friday. "We think the report and Iran's programs themselves are deeply troubling and need to be studied carefully by all members, and then we need to look at it seriously together."

U.S. officials said the IAEA report arrived last week and was being reviewed by the State Department and other agencies. They said the report will be the focus of the IAEA board of governors's meeting next week in Vienna.

This service contains only a small portion of the information produced daily by Middle East Newsline. For a subscription to the full service, please contact Middle East Newsline at: editor@menewsline.com for further details.

Here is another, related article:

Iran admits not reporting uranium imports
Associated Press
http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20030608.wiran0608/BNStory/Front/

Tehran, Iran — Iran admitted Saturday it failed to inform United Nations nuclear authorities that it imported a small quantity of uranium 12 years ago, but that this did not constitute a violation of the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.

Gholamreza Aghazadeh, head of Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, also urged the UN's Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency to widely publish a report into Iran's nuclear program to prove Washington is wrong when it claims Iran is in violation of the treaty.

Washington has long accused Tehran of wanting to build a nuclear bomb and wants the IAEA to declare Iran in violation of the international treaty. Iran rejects such claims and says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.

Mr. Aghazadeh said an IAEA report published last week on Iran's nuclear facilities referred to "a legal debate," but did not back up American claims that Iran was violating international atomic protocols.

"There is no mention of the word violation, something the U.S. is trying to instigate," Mr. Aghazadeh told state-run television. "The report only mentions failure, which is still a legal debate between us. And these are normal differences."

On Friday, a diplomat from an IAEA member state said the IAEA report indicated Iran had not declared the import of some nuclear material and its subsequent processing.

Mr. Aghazadeh accused America of being the "biggest violator of the NPT," saying it transferred nuclear technology to Israel.

Mr. Aghazadeh said the report mentions Iran's 1991 import of a small quantity of uranium hexofluoride, a chemical form of uranium used for the enrichment process.

IAEA regulations then did not require Tehran to inform the agency of the importation, he said.

Mr. Aghazadeh acknowledged, however, that the agency report said Iran "should have informed" it of the acquisition.

He did not say why Iran imported the hexofluoride, but Iran has since identified the materials to the IAEA, which now has them under "safeguard."

The report will be publicly discussed when the agency's board meets June 16.

Three IAEA inspectors arrived in Iran Saturday to assess the country's nuclear activities. The visit is widely seen as a chance for Iran to counter U.S. accusations of a nuclear weapons program and show it is eager to co-operate with the IAEA.

Also Sunday, Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Washington's outcry over Iran's nuclear capabilities is an attempt to block Iran's economic progress.

"By making accusation against Iran, the United States wants to play down the social progress the Iranian nation has achieved in the past 24 years," the official Islamic Republic News Agency quoted him as saying.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell told CNN's Late Edition Sunday that Washington was not seeking regime change in Iran, but said many young Iranians were dissatisfied with Tehran's political leadership.

"What we have to do is keep showing to the Iranian people that there is a better world out there waiting for you, and you can become a more responsible member of the international community if you stop supporting terrorist activity and if you stop trying to develop weapons of mass destruction," Mr. Powell said.

Washington accuses Iran of sponsoring terrorist groups and recently claimed Tehran was harbouring members of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.

Iran rejects the claims, but admits to holding unidentified al-Qaeda members in custody and says it will deport them to their home countries once their identities are confirmed.

What started it all to begin with? Let's see now, American interventionalist foreign policy in the 1980's providing WMD to Iraq..... the rise of anti-Americanism because of our own meddleing and oh yeah ..... government can't even read visa applications submitted by terrorists!

October 9, 2002, 10:30 a.m.
Visas that Should Have Been Denied -- A look at 9/11 terrorists’ visa applications.
http://www.nationalreview.com/mowbray/mowbray100902.asp

The cover story in National Review's October 28th issue (out Friday) details how at least 15 of the 19 September 11 hijackers should have been denied visas — an assessment based on expert analyses of 15 of the terrorists' visa-application forms, obtained exclusively by NR.

In the year after 9/11, the hand-wringing mostly centered on the FBI and CIA's failure to "connect the dots." But that would not have been a fatal blow if the "dots" had not been here in the first place. If the U.S. State Department had followed the law, at least 15 of the 19 "dots" should have been denied visas — and they likely wouldn't have been in the United States on September 11, 2001.

According to expert analyses of the visa-application forms of 15 of the 9/11 terrorists (the other four applications could not be obtained), all the applicants among the 15 reviewed should have been denied visas under then-existing law. Six separate experts who analyzed the simple, two-page forms came to the same conclusion: All of the visa applications they reviewed should have been denied on their face.

9/11 Terrorist Visa Applications
Hani Hanjour, 1997 (~167k file)
Hani Hanjour, 2000 (b) (~169k file)
Hani Hanjour, 2000 (a) (~205k file)
Waleed al-Sherhi, 2000 (~169k file)
Wail al-Sherhi, 2000 (~206k file)
Abdulaziz Alomari, 2001 (~259k file)

Even to the untrained eye, it is easy to see why many of the visas should have been denied. Consider, for example, the U.S. destinations most of them listed. Only one of the 15 provided an actual address — and that was only because his first application was refused — and the rest listed only general locations — including "California," "New York," "Hotel D.C.," and "Hotel." One terrorist amazingly listed his U.S. destination as simply "No." Even more amazingly, he got a visa.

The experts — who scrutinized the applications of 14 Saudis and one from the United Arab Emirates — include four former consular officers, a current consular officer stationed in Latin America, and a senior official at Consular Affairs (CA) — the division within the State Department that oversees consulates and visa issuance — who has extensive consular experience.

All six experts strongly agreed that even allowing for human error, no more than a handful of the visa applications should have managed to slip through the cracks. Making the visa lapses even more inexplicable, the State Department claims that at least 11 of the 15 were interviewed by consular officers. Nikolai Wenzel, one of the former consular officers who analyzed the forms, declares that State's issuance of the visas "amounts to criminal negligence."

The visas should have been denied because of a provision in the law known as 214(b), which states that almost all nonimmigrant visa (NIV) applicants are presumed to be intending immigrants. The law is clear: "Every alien [other than several narrowly exempted subcategories] shall be presumed to be an immigrant until he establishes to the satisfaction of the consular officer, at the time of application for a visa, that he is entitled to a nonimmigrant [visa]." State's Deputy Press Secretary Phil Reeker recently remarked that 214(b) is "quite a threshold to overcome." It just wasn't for Saudi applicants.

Defying the conventional wisdom that al Qaeda had provided its operatives with extensive training to game the system with the right answers to guarantee a visa, the applications were littered with red flags, almost all of which were ignored. The forms were also plagued with significant amounts of missing information — something that should have been sufficient grounds to deny many of the visas. For example, while all but one terrorist claimed to be employed or in school, only on three forms is the area marked "Name and Street Address of Present Employer or School" even filled out. At the very least, the CA executive points out, "The consular officers should not have ended the interview until the forms were completed."

Any discrepancies or apparent problems that would have been resolved by way of explanation or additional documentation should have been noted in the area reserved for a consular officer's comments — yet this was only done on one of the forms. Which begs the question: Were 11 of the 15 terrorists whose applications were reviewed actually interviewed as State claims?

Though all of the 15 applications obtained by NR should have been denied, some were worse than others. Here are some of the worst:

Wail and Waleed al-Shehri
Brothers Wail and Waleed al-Shehri applied together for travel visas on October 24, 2000. Wail claimed his occupation was "teater," while his brother wrote "student." Both listed the name and address of his respective employer or school as simply "South City." Each also declared a U.S. destination of "Wasantwn." But what should have further raised a consular officer's eyebrows is the fact that a student and his nominally employed brother were going to go on a four-to-six-month vacation, paid for by Wail's "teater" salary, which he presumably would be foregoing while in the United States. Even assuming very frugal accommodations, such a trip for two people would run north of $15,000, yet there is no indication that the consular officer even attempted to determine that Wail in fact had the financial means to fund the planned excursion. They appear to have received their visas the same day they applied.

Abdulaziz Alomari
On June 18, 2001, Abdulaziz Alomari filled out a simple, two-page application for a visa to come to the United States. Alomari was not exactly the ideal candidate for a visa. He claimed to be a student, though he left blank the space for the name and address of his school. He checked the box claiming he was married, yet he left blank the area where he should have put the name of his spouse. Although he claimed to be a student, he marked on his form that he would self-finance a two-month stay at the "JKK Whyndham Hotel" — and provided no proof, as required under law, that he could actually do so.

Despite the legal requirement that a visa applicant show strong roots in his home country (to give him or her a reason to come back from America), Alomari listed his home address as the "ALQUDOS HTL JED" (a hotel in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia). Alomari didn't even bother filling in the fields asking for his nationality and gender, apparently realizing that he didn't need to list much more than his name to get a visa to the United States. As it turns out, he didn't. He got his visa.

When he arrived in the United States, he connected with his friend, Mohammed Atta. And less than three months later — on September 11 — he and Atta helped crash American Airlines Flight 11 into the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

Hani Hanjour
The most troubling of the applications reviewed is Hanjour's. It appears that Hanjour was the only applicant of the 15 who was initially refused — although this is not entirely clear, because the consular officers did not always circle "Issued" or "Refused" (as required by law) on the other forms. Hanjour had received a student visa in 1997 in order to study English at the ELS Language Center in Melbourne, Fla. On his first of two attempts to obtain a second visa in 2000, Hanjour requested a travel visa for the purpose of a "visit" — for "three years." An unidentified consulate employee, likely a Foreign Service national (a Saudi resident), highlighted the obvious problem with an applicant stating a desire to overstay his visa (the maximum length for a travel visa is 24 months) with an extra-long "visit." The unknown employee wrote in the comment box: "like to stay three years or more!" and circled the remark. That employee or a different one also scribbled something underneath about Hanjour's wish to find a flight school during the trip. This application was refused — but only temporarily.

On the subsequent application filed two weeks later, Hanjour was armed with all the right answers. Rather than stating "AZ, Rent home" as his U.S. location, he gave a specific address, complete with a house number and street name — the only one of the 15 applicants to have done so. On the second go-round, Hanjour applied for a twelve-month student visa, and changed the purpose of the visit to "study" and the desired length of stay to a more appropriate "one year." But so many changes, all of which smoothed out rough spots on the original application, should have troubled the consular officer. "It's never a good sign if someone cleans up his paperwork too well," comments the current consular officer stationed in Latin America.

As disturbing as the visa forms are, perhaps more disturbing is that State's handpicked candidate to be the new chief enforcer of visa policies, Maura Harty, had not even looked at them as of her Senate confirmation hearing last week — yet the Senate is poised to rubber stamp her nomination. That's a real shame, because examining the applications yields many valuable lessons. The most important is that we're not going to keep out terrorists until State figures out that it needs to enforce the law.

— Joel Mowbray is an NRO contributor and a Townhall.com columnist.

Leftist script? What on Earth do you mean?

Because I enjoy history and I do not believe “madmen” are created overnight … let me take a minute of your time to summarize recent history in Iraq:

· Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) were sold to Iraq on a regular basis by the United States government; in the 1980’s Ronald Reagan’s dummy minister Donald Rumsfeld ensured this happened as a method for national security under the guise of the National Security Act (1947). These WMD were intended not as “dual-use” bio-toxins but, in fact, freely distributed to Iraq for war with Iran. The goal was to upset the Iranians and to stop a war that was creating problems about the flow of oil into America. Iraq effectively won this war with known deaths of thousands of Iranians as a result of using chemical weapons.

· Saddam Hussein was always a bloodthirsty butcher. As a result of US foreign policy intervention into his little local wars with Iran the madman decided to hit on Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. In a way, the US government encouraged this orgasmic evolution of a modern madman, forgetting everything about what our American republic stands for.

· George Bush defeated Hussein’s warmongering in the Gulf War of 1991 thus protecting the entire gulf region. It was quick and decisive but the effort was not designed to defeat Hussein; it was designed to increase US presence to assure continuing oil flow to America. Some call this policy decision, “stability” but that is pure hogwash under the guise of political BS or international relations; we knew our international policies encouraged this madman and were afraid to exercise a forthright decision by a weak kneed president.

There is an undercurrent issue (through the 1990s) that manifested because of US foreign policy intervention in the middle east (ME), largely dictated by the CIA besides Saddam Hussein. Our increasing influence about the region lead to the rise of another bloodthirsty madman, Osama Bin Laden but this is another parallel issue that we later found out. · I will bypass Bill Clinton’s work about this hornet’s nest left by two republican presidents because Bill Clinton did nothing but encourage the growth of al-Quada by doing nothing … while he knew all about them; he must have thought of al-Quada as Democrats exercising their political rights planning attacks upon America. We had two American embassies torn to shreds so in effect, he was not only on his knees getting blow jobs; but was begging for America to get a kick in the ass. The pansy did nothing for us; well he shot off a couple missiles into Pakistan missing Afghanistan killing piles of innocent people that made Osama jump with joy about renewed hopes in his efforts.

· Along comes GWBush, a Texas country bumpkin that only knew how to read his own stock reports; someone that lost debate about an election process and required the US Supreme Court to rule in his favor as POTUS. The muther-fucker started off on the wrong foot and his slope has been ongoing into the sewer from there. After 9/11 his first knee-jerk reaction was to eliminate individual rights, liberties and freedoms … by signing a document that is so pervasive an anti-American that he will probably get the US Supreme Court to agree with his treasons.

9/11 performed a large number of simultaneous awakenings to America … the largest issue: it forced America to realize our freedoms are worthless because the government has maintained a worthless policy requiring complete revising; that the American government has not operated upon the sound principals as set forth in the US Constitution. It appears the Patriot Act is set in stone for us …… with ever diminishing individual liberties because of national security.

· Afghanistan was OBL’s Loveland and America knew it for a decade. If you notice, there was never an issue anywhere around the world about the attack America imposed upon Afghanistan; America just took it, scattering the al-Quada evermore around the world pipe bombing Pakistan, India, Israel, Philippines and Europe. It is correct to say, America is in control of Afghanistan. Still, the core issue is that OBL and almost all of his terrorists are scattered everywhere around the world. Good CIA policy? Again?

· Proliferation of WMD was never an issue for America. America’s government readily gave WMD to nation’s understanding specific requirements about the technology. Iraq was one nation under agreement and Iraq obeyed in the 1980’s.

But, Iraq became a suspicious supplier of WMD to rogue organizations only because of 9/11. The CIA reasoning was the attempt upon political leaders in America because anthrax received in the mail. There has never been a known trail of these pure chemical bio-toxins linking Iraq except to US exports back in the 1980’s.

· GWBush, having only scattered al-Quada around the world was left with no other decision but to impact Iraq for all WMD with a clear goal … to diminish America’s already forgotten foreign policy of giving the stuff away. If I were the president I would have done that, too. But GWBush made the issue more than a statement of war. GWBush BS(d) the world about an WMD inventory, including the UN where he had no facts. The UN knew it too; that’s why there was almost zero support within the UN about America’s efforts.. GWBush attempted to rationalize a war with Iraq for no other reason than America could not trace the trail of antrax other than it was produced in the USA!

· GWBush used UN security council 1441 as a tool. This was a bad decision, too. It alienated ALMOST EVERYONE AROUND THE WORLD about the policy to introduce war with a sovereign nation for no known reasons. And this is the problem that GWBush has made for America. While he has used his political strength to curtail our freedoms here in America, he has lied about Iraq.

· There are no WMD in Iraq. There haven’t been since the UN was there. It is a myth, a lie, a fabrication because we have a government that blames everyone for our failures upon others. And we shall always be caught up in this cycle of corrupt government showing action BUT NEVER will are government show results; it just keeps digging a hole upon us, the free People of America.

Use of nukes forbidden by Islam, Iran's FM says in rejecting US charges
Sun Jun 8, 2:42 PM ET
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20030608/wl_mideast_afp/iran_nuclear_us_un_030608184226

TEHRAN, June 8 (AFP) - The use of nuclear, chemical or biological arms is "haram," or strictly forbidden by Islam, Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi said Sunday in Iran's strongest rejection yet of allegations that it is seeking to develop atomic weapons.

But Kharazi said exerting pressure on the Islamic republic over its nuclear energy programme -- being developed with Russian assistance -- was counter-productive.

And the minister renewed Iranian accusations that fellow signatories of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) had failed to fulfil their side of the deal.

"We consider using biological, chemical and nuclear weapons as an act of haram," Kharazi told MPs in a parliamentary question session focused on international tensions surrounding Iran's atomic programme.

"We have no nuclear weapons programme and we have said this frankly and clearly so many times. We have a security doctrine that is without nuclear weapons," the minister said.

"We only use nuclear facilities for peaceful purposes," he added, insisting that the work of Iranian scientists was a matter of national pride.

The comments came a day after inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) arrived in Iran on a prearranged visit amid charges from the body that Tehran had failed to fully honor the nuclear safeguard agreement.

According to an IAEA report filed to member states ahead of a Vienna meeting on June 16 with IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei, Iran was found to have violated the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) but was taking steps to correct the problem.

The United States, which has accused Iran of using civil atomic energy programmes as a cover to develop nuclear weapons, said the findings by the IAEA were "deeply troubling" and a cause for world alarm.

Washington has also been pressuring Russia to end its cooperation in a multi-billion-dollar nuclear power plant project in Bushehr, southern Iran, as well as to slap stricter sanctions on Iranian companies.

Iran has also come under mounting pressure to sign an additional protocol to the NPT that would allow IAEA inspectors to carry out surprise inspections of even undeclared sites.

The agency has been carrying out inspections in Iran since February, when ElBaradei inspected nuclear sites.

But Kharazi said such pressure was counter-productive and added critical governments should instead respect the NPT by aiding Iran in acquiring peaceful nuclear technology.

"They cannot deal like this with Iran," he told deputies. "They cannot put us under pressure and say accept this protocol, or put us under pressure not to use atomic technology for peaceful purposes."

"They should deal with Iran like this: we are inviting all industrial countries such as European ones, the United States, the Far East and Southeast Asia to come to Iran and participate with Iran in building atomic facilities," he said.

"Whether you help us or don't help us, we have the capability to continue with our plans. But if you want us to remain clear and frank, come and help us and participate. Once you come and participate, you will see that we have nothing to hide," he added.

"You have to help Iran, because pressure will lead nowhere and will only make radical thoughts flourish, and this is not in the favour of us, the region or anybody."

And in an interview with state television, Iran's atomic energy agency chief Gholamreza Aghazadeh called for the IAEA to publish its findings as soon as possible "to prove that the United States is lying". He also denied that Iran had committed any violations -- even minor -- of the NPT.

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