IAEA DG Mohamed ElBaradei made some public remarks. It’s a mixed picture.

Update: see “the actual report”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/file_download/158/Iran.pdf.

Highlights from “Reuters”:http://uk.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUKTRE51G5JL20090217:

“They haven’t really been adding centrifuges, which is a good thing,” ElBaradei said at a think-tank in Paris, adding: “Our assessment is that it’s a political decision.”

[snip]

“Natanz is supposed to have 50,000 centrifuges. Right now they have 5,000,” he said, adding that Iran had not added a “significant” number of centrifuges.

[snip]

“No, I’m not obviously happy with the degree of cooperation … They shut off any cooperation with the agency over the past few months,” said ElBaradei, who has for years called on Iran to do more to help his agency’s investigations.

“Iran right now is not providing any access or any clarification with regard to those studies or the whole possible military dimension,” he added.

ElBaradei played down fears of an imminent Iranian bomb.

“They will have probably in a year or so enough low enriched uranium which, if converted to highly enriched uranium, and if they have the know-how to weaponise it and to deliver it, then they can have one nuclear weapon,” he said.

But many other steps would have to be taken to produce a weapon, such as walking out of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, expelling U.N. nuclear inspectors and mastering the technology to produce a nuclear explosion, he said.

“If I go by the intelligence community in the U.S., they are saying that they still have 2-5 years to be able to do that — to develop a weapon — which to me means that we have at least enough time for diplomacy,” he said.

Related: ElBaradei’s last term is winding down. The AP’s George Jahn “profiles”:http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jiRSE2djCKxpy0LYT6SaecqOfCyQD96E21DO0 the two leading candidates for IAEA Director-General.