US expert: IAEA report on Iran contains hollow, baseless claims

US expert on the Middle East issues Gareth Porter said the recent report of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Iran’s nuclear program contains only baseless and hollow claims that lack authenticity. In an article published in a Malaysian website on Saturday, he said the incorrect information used for the report was provided by an Israeli national. He said that “the report of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) published by a Washington think tank Tuesday repeated the sensational claim previously reported by news media all over the world that a former Soviet nuclear weapons scientist had helped Iran construct a detonation system that could be used for a nuclear weapon.” However, he added, “it turns out that the foreign expert, who is not named in the IAEA report but was identified in news reports as Vyacheslav Danilenko, is not a nuclear weapons scientist but one of the top specialists in the world in the production of nanodiamonds by explosives. In fact, Danilenko, a Ukrainian, has worked solely on nanodiamonds from the beginning of his research career and is considered one of the pioneers in the development of nanodiamond technology, as published scientific papers confirm.” “It now appears that the IAEA and David Albright, the director of the International Institute for Science and Security in Washington, who was the source of the news reports about Danilenko, never bothered to check the accuracy of the original claim by an unnamed “Member State” on which the IAEA based its assertion about his nuclear weapons background,” he added. Gareth Porter went on to stress in his article that “the Danilenko story then went worldwide while the IAEA report says the agency has “strong indications” that Iran’s development of a “high-explosions initiation system,” which it has described as an “implosion system” for a nuclear weapon, was “assisted by the work of a foreign expert who was not only knowledgeable on these technologies, but who, a Member State has informed the Agency, worked for much of his career in the nuclear weapon program of the country of his origin.” According to the article, “the report offers no evidence of Danilenko’s involvement in the development of an initiation system,” while further research revealed that Danilenko worked from the beginning of his career in a part of an Institute that specialized in the synthesis of diamonds since 1960. Porter emphasizes that “Iran has an aggressive program to develop its nanotechnology sector …and Danilenko (has) clearly explained that the purpose of his work in Iran was to help the development of a nanodiamond industry in the country.” “Careful examination of the “alleged studies” documents has revealed inconsistencies and other anomalies that give evidence of fraud. But the IAEA, the United States and its allies in the IAEA continue to treat the documents as though there were no question about their authenticity. The unnamed member state that informed the agency about Danilenko’s alleged experience as a Soviet nuclear weapons scientist is almost certainly Israel, which has been the source of virtually all the purported intelligence on Iranian work on nuclear weapons over the past decade. Israel has made no secret of its determination to influence world opinion on the Iranian nuclear program by disseminating information to governments and news media, including purported Iran government documents. Israeli Foreign Ministry and intelligence officials told journalists Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins about the special unit of Mossad dedicated to that task at the very time the fraudulent documents were being produced,” the American expert concluded.