Nuclear Agency Says Iran Has Used New Technology

From The New York Times, February 23, 2008, by DAVID E. SANGER:

WASHINGTON — The International Atomic Energy Agency described for the first time on Friday the evidence it has shown to Iran that strongly suggests the country had experimented with technologies to manufacture a nuclear weapon....”

... an 11-page report ...painted a mixed picture of Iran’s activities, and confirmed that Iran had begun to deploy a new generation of machinery to enrich uranium. ....

But officials with the United Nations agency said Iran had refused to deal with the evidence that served as the basis for American charges that Iran had tried to design a weapon. Much of it was contained in a laptop computer slipped out of the country by an Iranian technician four years ago and obtained by German and American intelligence agencies....

....Since 2005, the I.A.E.A. has urged the United States and other countries to allow it to show Iran the evidence obtained on the laptop, which intelligence officials have said once belonged to an Iranian technician with access to the country’s nuclear program. But the United States. refused to allow the information to be shown to the Iranians until a few weeks ago.

Now that roadblock has been broken. The report says that a week ago the I.A.E.A was given permission to show original documents to the Iranians. In the report issued Friday, the agency described some of that evidence in public for the first time.

The most suspicious-looking document in the collection turned over to the I.A.E.A. was a schematic diagram showing what appeared to be the development of a warhead, with a layout of internal components. “This layout has been assessed by the agency as quite likely to be able to accommodate a nuclear device,” the I.A.E.A. wrote. But that does not prove it was a nuclear warhead, and Iran argued that its missile program used “conventional warheads only.”...