From the London Telegraph, by Philip Sherwell:

The man who for two years led Iran's nuclear negotiations has laid out in unprecedented detail how the regime took advantage of talks with Britain, France and Germany to forge ahead with its secret atomic programme. [....]

He boasted that while talks were taking place in Teheran, Iran was able to complete the installation of equipment for conversion of yellowcake — a key stage in the nuclear fuel process — at its Isfahan plant but at the same time convince European diplomats that nothing was afoot.

"From the outset, the Americans kept telling the Europeans, 'The Iranians are lying and deceiving you and they have not told you everything.' The Europeans used to respond, 'We trust them'," he said. [....]

He told his audience: "When we were negotiating with the Europeans in Teheran we were still installing some of the equipment at the Isfahan site. There was plenty of work to be done to complete the site and finish the work there. In reality, by creating a tame situation, we could finish Isfahan." [....]

He described the regime's quandary in September 2003 when the IAEA had demanded a "complete picture" of its nuclear activities. "The dilemma was if we offered a complete picture, the picture itself could lead us to the UN Security Council," he said. "And not providing a complete picture would also be a violation of the resolution and we could have been referred to the Security Council for not implementing the resolution."

Mr Rowhani disclosed that on at least two occasions the IAEA obtained information on secret nuclear—related experiments from academic papers published by scientists involved in the work.

Read the whole thing.

James Lewis   3 05 06