A key allegation in the IAEA report on Iranian nuclear activities has fallen apart. Gareth Porter has been able to use interviews and other material to demonstrate that Vyacheslav Danilenko, a Russian scientist referred to without being identified in the report, is not a nuclear weapons expert. His field is nanotechnology (making tiny machines), and Iran has been looking into making diamonds with nanotechnology, bypassing the middle man.
Danilenko in a WP op-ed explains further.
Iran responds to the charges in the IAEA affair.
Russia has already signaled that it does not intend to allow further security council sanctions to be placed on Iran, despite the new report.
The Danilenko mistake reminds me of an incident in Iraq. In 2000 and after, US surveillance satellites picked up renewed activity at an old biological weapons lab. The hawks in the administration took the information as proof that Saddam Hussein had started back up his quest for biological weapons.
After the US invasion, inspectors were sent to this site and they found it that it had been looted. All the metal pipes, etc., were gone.
So what the US had interpreted as a sign of a revived weapons laboratory was no such thing.
Caveat emptor
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