Polonium-210, Fiction and Fact (and Litvinenko)
…most Russian nuclear reactors are subject to IAEA Safeguards. None of Israel’s are…
by Gordon Prather
According to Seymour Hersh, in early 2004, John Bolton, who was then the Under-Secretary of State for Arms Control, privately conveyed to International Atomic Energy Agency officials his suspicions that Iran was conducting research – at Parchin, the center of Iran’s Defense Industries Organization – into “the intricately timed detonation of conventional explosives” needed for implosion-type nuclear weapons.
But, even if Bolton’s suspicions were true, if no nuclear materials proscribed by the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons had been used in the alleged Iranian tests, then Iran would not have been in willful violation of its NPT-associated IAEA Safeguards agreement. In that case, what the Iranians had done or were doing at Parchin was literally none of the IAEA’s business. (more…)