Russia aiding Iran in nuclear program

PARIS — International nuclear inspectors are investigating whether a Russian scientist helped Iran conduct complex experiments on how to detonate a nuclear weapon, according to European and American officials.

As part of the investigation, inspectors at the International Atomic Energy Agency are seeking information from the scientist, whom they believe acted on his own as an adviser on experiments described in a lengthy document obtained by the agency, the officials said.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the investigation is underway, said that the document appeared authentic, without explaining why, but made clear that they did not think the scientist was working on behalf of the Russian government.

Still, it is the first time that the nuclear agency has suggested that Iran might have received help from a foreign weapons scientist in developing nuclear arms.

The American and European officials said the new document, written in Farsi, is part of an accumulation of evidence that Iran has worked toward developing a nuclear weapon, despite Tehran’s claims that its atomic work over the last two decades is aimed solely at producing electrical power.

Last February, in a closed-door briefing in the agency’s headquarters in Vienna, the agency’s chief nuclear inspector presented diplomats from dozens of countries with a trove of newly declassified evidence — documents, sketches and even a video — that he said raised questions about whether Iran has tried to design a weapon.

Among the data presented by Olli Heinonen, the chief inspector, were indications that the Iranians had worked on exploding detonators that are critical for the firing of most nuclear weapons.

When the Iranian envoy at the briefing called the charges “groundless” and protested that the tests were for conventional arms, Mr. Heinonen replied that the experiments were “not consistent with any application other than the development of a nuclear weapon.” He called the shape and timing involved in the firing systems and detonators “key components of nuclear weapons.”

At the same time, however, Mr. Heinonen acknowledged that the agency “did not have sufficient information at this stage to conclude whether the allegations are groundless or the data fabricated.”

The new document currently under investigation offers further evidence of such experiments, Western officials said.

Iranian officials have said repeatedly that the documents the agency is using in its investigation of Iran’s past nuclear activities are fabrications or forgeries, and that any experiments were not related to nuclear weapons.

Iran has said the same about the new evidence, although the I.A.E.A. has not shown the full document to officials in Tehran. Instead, Iran has been given only five pages of excerpts that have been translated from Farsi into English.

The Western officials said that the conditions under which the inspectors obtained the document prohibited them from revealing it in full to the Iranians, out of fear that it could expose the source of the document.

These restrictions present a dilemma for Mohamed ElBaradei, the agency’s director, who is pressuring Iran to reveal its past nuclear activity. “I cannot accuse a person without providing him or her with the evidence,” he said in an interview last year.
Although officials would not say how they obtained the new document, it was first publicly mentioned in an agency report last May as one of 18 documents presented to Iran in connection with alleged nuclear weapons studies.

It was described as a “five-page document in English” dealing with experimentation with a complex initiation system to detonate a substantial amount of high explosives and to monitor the detonation with probes. There was no indication that the document was a translation of a much longer and more comprehensive document in Farsi.

The original document is described by officials familiar with it as a detailed narrative of experiments aimed at creating a perfectly-timed implosion of nuclear material.

According to experts, the two most difficult challenges in developing nuclear weapons is creating the bomb fuel and figuring out how to compress and detonate it.

An agency report last month revealed that Iran may have received “foreign expertise” in its detonator experiments.

A senior official with links to the agency said at the time that a foreign government was not involved. He also ruled out the involvement of Libya and the remnants of the network run by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani metallurgist who built the world’s largest black-market sales operation for nuclear technology. But he refused to comment further.

European and American officials now say that the “foreign expertise” was a reference to the Russian scientist, but offered only scant details. They said the scientist is believed to have helped guide Iranians in the experiments, but that he was not the author of the document.
Nor is he thought to have been affiliated with the civilian electric power plant that is being rebuilt by Russia at the Iranian port of Bushehr, and which Russia has agreed to fuel with nuclear material, officials said.

Russia says it opposes any effort by Iran to obtain a weapon, but cooperation by Russian companies and individuals with some aspects of Iran’s nuclear program dates back years.
In the late 1990’s, Russia’s scientific and technical elite, reeling from the collapse of the Soviet Union, forged ties to Iran, which paid hard currency for aid in weapon and technical programs. Western experts say the assistance extended to Tehran’s atomic efforts, but there was never any proof in those years of a Russian link to nuclear weapons development.

“The Iranians were very active in recruiting and paying Russian scientists to provide them with assistance in their nuclear program,” said Gary S. Samore, a National Security Council official during the Clinton administration who now directs studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Dr. Samore said he had no recollection of Russian aid in the design of Iranian nuclear arms but added that it could have happened. “There was so much back and forth,” he said in an interview. “It’s plausible to me that they at some point paid a Russian nuclear expert to provide assistance.”

Asked about the potential contribution of the Russian scientist in detonator experimentation, a senior Russian official who has long followed Iran’s nuclear program said, “It is difficult for me to add anything.”