Um, according to Agence France Presse, “top Iranian cleric Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani accused the United States of unbalancing IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei’s ‘mental state’ by submitting secret documents just days before the report. ‘The US has submitted a stack of documents to disrupt ElBaradei’s mental state and has been successful to some extent’, said the head of the elite clerical body the Assembly of Experts, according to the state news agency IRNA”. This AFP story is posted here.
Rafsanjani is also a former President of Iran.
The Associated Press reported that “a senior Iranian official on Sunday blamed the U.S. for Tehran’s refusal to respond to an International Atomic Energy Agency probe into whether Iran tried to make nuclear weapons in the past. Ali Ashgar Soltanieh, Iran’s chief delegate to the IAEA, claimed information provided by Washington and used by the U.N. agency was fake and it came to Tehran too late for a proper review. The U.S. dismissed the complaint, saying Iran could have answered concerns about its nuclear program years ago … Most of the material shown to Iran by the IAEA in its investigation of the nation’s alleged attempts to make nuclear arms came from Washington, though some was provided by U.S. allies, diplomats told The Associated Press. The agency shared it with Tehran only after the nations gave their permission. But Soltanieh dismissed much of the material as false. In any case, he said, it came too late — three years after U.S. intelligence claimed it had material on a laptop computer smuggled out of Iran indicating that Tehran had been working on details of nuclear weapons. The data supposedly included missile trajectories and ideal altitudes for exploding warheads. ‘They should have given it to us three years ago’, Soltanieh said, suggesting Tehran would then have had a more substantive response. Instead, he said, Iran did not get an offer for a review until mid-February. By that time, he said, the deadline for the conclusion of the IAEA investigation into Iran’s nuclear past had passed and experts were already working on the agency’s report. ‘All of a sudden, the Americans notice this thing is going to be closed’, he said, referring to the investigation. Suddenly, he added, ‘they have additional and new documents — these dirty games should be stopped immediately’. The United States denied being at fault. ‘Iran did not need to wait for information to answer’ the accusations coming from many sides that it was trying to make nuclear arms, said Gregory L. Schulte, the top U.S. delegate to the IAEA. Soltanieh also acknowledged that his country’s uranium enrichment program was experiencing ‘ups and downs’. It appeared to be the first Iran admitted its enrichment activities were running into some difficulties”. This AP report is here.