by Gordon Prather
Sisyphus was a character in Greek mythology, condemned to roll a huge rock
to the top of a steep hill, with said accursed rock rolling back down again
the moment Sisyphus thought he had accomplished his task.
In the modern version of this Greek tragedy, G. Aghazadeh, Vice-President of
Iran and President of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, has been cast
as Sisyphus.
The tragedy has its origin in the 1974 agreement between Iran and the
International Atomic Energy Agency for the application of "safeguards" Ð in
accordance with the IAEA Statute - on certain materials and activities
proscribed by the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
The Safeguards Agreement was agreed to by Iran "for the exclusive purpose of
verification" by the IAEA "with a view of preventing diversion" of any
"source or special fissionable material" to a military purpose.
IAEA Safeguards were to be applied to all Iranian source or special
fissionable materials, whether being stored or chemically/physically
produced, processed, transformed, utilized or disposed of as waste.
Last week Mohamed ElBaradei, IAEA Director-General, made his most recent
report to the IAEA Board of Governors, entitled "Implementation of the NPT
Safeguards Agreement and relevant provisions of Security Council resolutions
1737 and 1747 in the Islamic Republic of Iran."
So, what does ElBaradei have to say about the Iranian NPT Safeguards
Agreement?
"The Agency has been able to continue to verify the non-diversion of
declared nuclear material in Iran.
"Iran has provided the Agency with access to declared nuclear material and
has provided the required nuclear material accountancy reports in connection
with declared nuclear material and activities."
Okay, that's that. The huge rock has been pushed to the top. Iran continues
to be in full compliance with all its obligations assumed as a NPT
signatory. . . .
FULL TEXT
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Physicist James Gordon Prather has served as a policy implementing official
for national security-related technical matters in the Federal Energy
Agency, the Energy Research and Development Administration, the Department
of Energy, the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Department of the
Army. Dr. Prather also served as legislative assistant for national security
affairs to U.S. Sen. Henry Bellmon, R-Okla. - ranking member of the Senate
Budget Committee and member of the Senate Energy Committee and
Appropriations Committee. Dr. Prather had earlier worked as a nuclear
weapons physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California
and Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico.
Enver Masud, "Iran Has an 'Inalienable
Right' to Nuclear Energy," The Wisdom Fund, January 16, 2006
Leonard Doyle, "U.S. Hits Iran
With Toughest Sanctions Since 1979," Independent, October 26, 2007
Tahani Karrar, "Third Middle East Undersea
Cable Cut," Zawya Dow Jones, February 1, 2008
[The evidence was gleaned largely from a laptop computer that was spirited
out of Iran in 2004 and obtained by U.S. intelligence agencies.--Warren P.
Strobel, "Iran rejects
U.S. weapons evidence, U.N. agency says," McClatchy Newspapers,
February 22, 2008]
[There are some indications, moreover, that the MEK obtained the documents
not from an Iranian source but from Israel's Mossad.--Gareth Porter, "Iran Nuke Laptop
Data Came from Terror Group," Inter Press Service, February 29, 2008]
[Last Monday, the chief United Nations nuclear inspector gathered
ambassadors and experts from dozens of nations in a boardroom high above the
Danube in Vienna and laid out a trove of evidence that he said raised new
questions about whether Iran had tried to design an atom bomb.--William J.
Broad and David E. Sanger, "Meeting
on Arms Data Reignites Iran Nuclear Debate," New York Times, March 3, 2008]
Robin Wright, "Iran a Nuclear Threat, Bush Insists: Experts Say
President Is Wrong and Is Escalating Tensions," Washington Post,
March 21, 2008
Eric Umansky, "Lost Over Iran:
How the press let the White House craft the narrative about nukes,"
Columbia Journalism Review, March / April 2008
