This week, the governing board of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is holding a meeting in Vienna and, as expected, non-proliferation issues pertaining to North Korea and Iran will be given top priority. This is at a time when United States officials have made optimum use of the IAEA's recent report that indirectly confirms that Iran has "sufficient fissile material to make a bomb", to quote Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

In his opening address to the IAEA meeting, Mohammad ElBaradei, the agency's director general, said that Iran's nuclear activities were being monitored and there was no evidence of military diversion, adding however that "Iran has not suspended itsenrichment-related activities, or its work on heavy water-related projects. Nor has Iran implemented the Additional Protocol [of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty]. Iran has not permitted the agency to perform the required design information verification at the IR-40 reactor currently under construction. Such access, together with the sampling of destroyed and salvaged equipment and debris, is essential for the agency to complete its assessment."

ElBaradei has been downplaying Iran's cooperation for some time, raising the ire of Tehran and leading some commentators to attribute this to, among other things, such extraneous factors as the new low in Iran-Egypt relations. This is in light of ElBaradei's Egyptian background and growing tensions between Tehran and Cairo over the recent Gaza war and Cairo's reported readiness to embrace the exiled Iranian opposition, the Mujahideen-e Khalq Organization, which is getting kicked out of Iraq.

A Tehran University political science professor, expressing Tehran's growing dissatisfaction with respect to the IAEA's performance, asked: "Mr ElBaradei in his own reports has repeatedly confirmed that (a) 'The agency has been able to continue to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material in Iran' and (b) that 'all nuclear material in the country remain under agency containment and surveillance', so the question is why is he suddenly quiet on all that is positive in Iran's cooperation with the IAEA?"

Another analyst at the Institute for Strategic Studies, a Tehran think-tank, told the author that ElBaradei, who went on record last October as stating categorically that Iran did not have enough low-enriched uranium to develop one nuclear bomb, may have been genuinely surprised by the results of the agency's physical inventory. He added, however, "Mr ElBaradei should have known there was the possibility of some discrepancy and we are surprised by his surprise."

What is more, whereas ElBaradei and some of his colleagues gave themselves the license to speculate on the timeline when Iran could convert its peaceful nuclear work into weaponization - ElBaradei most recently put the estimate at two to five years from now - the reaction in Iran is that this is highly irresponsible and even odd since he does not make similar statements about other countries such as Japan and South Korea. These countries have similar capabilities and the IAEA should refrain from such speculations that lend themselves to serious misinformation on Iran, let alone dangerous political and even military deductions by the US and Israel.

Case in point, it is noteworthy that Mullen's statement above came in response to a rather misleading question by a CNN reporter, who conveyed the impression that the IAEA has indeed confirmed that Iran has sufficient enriched uranium to make a bomb. Subsequently, instead of amending his response in light of the intense heat that it generated, not to mention the simultaneous press interview by US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who indirectly contradicted Mullen by insisting that Iran was nowhere near putting together a bomb, Mullen through his spokesman Captain John Kirby, stuck to his guns. Kirby "clarified" that his boss was simply referring to the IAEA's finding that Iran had processed 2,222 pounds (1,010 kilograms) of low-enriched uranium.

Click here to read more