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What Iran Won't Say about the Bomb

(New York Times) William J. Broad and David E. Sanger - With negotiators facing a deadline later this month to cut a basic agreement with Iran on the fate of its nuclear program, they are also discussing whether a final deal should compel Tehran to reveal the depth of its atomic knowledge. That inner debate, said one European official, turns on "whether to force Iran to explain its past" - especially before 2003, when American intelligence officials believe Iran operated a full-scale equivalent of the Manhattan Project. How fully will Iran have to answer questions it has avoided for years from UN inspectors with the International Atomic Energy Agency, based in Vienna? "Iran's most serious verification shortcoming," Olli Heinonen, the former chief inspector, now at Harvard, said recently, "remains its unwillingness to address concerns about the past and possibly ongoing military dimensions of its nuclear program." One solution, analysts suggest, would be the gradual lifting of sanctions in step with the investigators certifying that Tehran was finally answering their longstanding queries.
2015-03-09 00:00:00
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