Sorry for the light blogging lately. I’ll put up a few housekeeping posts.

This first one contains the IAEA Board “resolution”:http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/focus/iaeairan/bog112011-69.pdf on Iran, that government’s “statement”:http://www.irna.ir/ENNewsShow.aspx?NID=30669196 regarding the resolution, and an Iranian “letter of protest”:http://www.isna.ir/ISNA/NewsView.aspx?ID=News-1892686&Lang=E to the IAEA.

Lastly, the NAM “statement on”:http://www.isna.ir/ISNA/NewsView.aspx?ID=News-1893076&Lang=E the resolution contains this very interesting paragraph:

bq. Before concluding, NAM wishes to express its deep concern and dissatisfaction at the *selective circulation of the Director General’s report, or parts thereof, to certain Member States prior to its official release to all Member States*. This runs counter to the principle of the sovereign equality of all Member States enshrined in the IAEA Statute and should not be repeated in the future.

One imagines there’s a story behind this…

Before I leave on travel, during which I shan’t blog, I wanted to point out one more item from the “recent IAEA report”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/2149/nov-2011-iaea-iran-report on Iran.

Paragraph 35 of the Annex says:

bq. In an interview in 2007 with a member of the clandestine nuclear supply network, *the Agency was told that Iran had been provided with nuclear explosive design information.* From information provided to the Agency during that interview, the Agency is concerned that *Iran may have obtained more advanced design information than the information identified in 2004 as having been provided to Libya by the nuclear supply network.*

This, as far as I recall, is the first reference to Iran’s acquisition of such design info in an official publication. The 2007 “NIE”:http://www.dni.gov/press_releases/20071203_release.pdf doesn’t say anything like that.

Have a good weekend.

Clif Burns has an “entertaining post”:http://www.exportlawblog.com/archives/3645 about export controls over at ExportLawBlog.

I’m serious. He writes that the State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls removed certain chemical toilets from the US Munitions List, explaining that “[t]he toilet in question was initially manufactured for the Lockheed C-130 and was subsequently modified for other military aircraft.”

I concur that this line from the DOS notification, which is apparently an explanation of this item’s limited military applications, is just outstanding:

bq. The core functionality of the toilet remains the same as a model used for commercial aircraft.

Nothing to add to that.

I noticed that CEIP’s Pierre Goldschmidt presented an interesting “short paper”:http://carnegieendowment.org/files/Looking_Beyond_Iran_and_North_Korea.pdf on the IAEA safeguards system. I just wanted to add one thought.

The paper correctly argues that, in the case of NNWS, commitments contained in CSAs and APs are “much more limited” than the powers given to the IAEA by its statute. However, I think it’s worth noting that, from what I understand, these limitations exist partly because the IAEA statute isn’t self-executing. Therefore, the IAEA’s legal authority to implement safeguards is grounded in the CSAs and APs.

That is all.

In a shocking turn of events that no one could have anticipated, ISIS “has it.”:http://isis-online.org/uploads/isis-reports/documents/IAEA_Iran_8Nov2011.pdf

This thing has been talked to death already, it seems, but I do wish to highlight this paragraph:

bq. The information indicates that prior to the end of 2003 the above activities took place under a structured programme. There are also indications that some activities relevant to the development of a
nuclear explosive device continued after 2003, and that some may still be ongoing.

I actually think the description of the suspected nuclear weapons program is one of the most interesting aspects of the report.

Spencer Ackerman was gracious enough to quote me in this “good piece”:http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/11/loose-geek/ about the potential spread of nuclear expertise:

bq. But the fact that no one precisely knows how large the problem is speaks to its danger. [Sharon] Squassoni, like every expert contacted for the story, laments the fact that it’s an under-researched topic. If the U.S. government even knows, it’s not telling. “It’s the kind of thing that when you start asking, you hit the classification wall pretty quickly,” says Paul Kerr, a proliferation expert at the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, who estimates that the number is in the tens of thousands of scientists.

I do feel the need to clarify one thing…although I told Spencer that the tens of thousands estimate sounded credible to me, it’s not MY estimate; I’ve never researched that particular issue. That’s not to say the number’s wrong – as I said, it sounds credible to me.

Spencer is a great blogger/journalist and I’m certainly not accusing him of making stuff up or misquoting me; there was just a misunderstanding.

I’m planning a series of posts about Libya, on top of “this one”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/2114/libya-and-cw I did a little while back.

This first short offering is about “Security Council Resolution 2017,”:http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs//2011/sc10429.doc.htm adopted last week. Its focus is obviously on MANPADS, but there are some provisions related to WMD:

bq.. 1. Calls upon the Libyan authorities to take all necessary steps to prevent the *proliferation of all arms and related materiel of all types,* in particular man-portable surface-to-air missiles, to ensure their proper custody, *as well as to meet Libya’s arms control, disarmament and non-proliferation obligations under international law, through the full implementation of their plans in this regard;*

“2. Further calls upon the Libyan authorities to continue their *close coordination with the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, with the aim of destroying their stockpiles of chemical weapons, in accordance with their international obligations;*

Apologies for the lack of blogging. I’ve been busy because the battle between the mongoose and cobra I recently purchased has been more prolonged than anticipated.

Anyway, Jeffrey recently blogged about two items that Iran’s AEOI had at the September IAEA General Conference: “a laser pointer”:http://lewis.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/4570/iranian-giveaway-at-the-gc shaped like an IR-1 and an “IR-1 on display.”:http://lewis.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/4576/more-on-iran-at-the-gc

Unfortunately, I don’t have any visual aids, but I can add a couple of tidbits: first, the laser pointer has lights in three different colors.

Second, and more interesting, is a flash drive that the AEOI was distributing with information about Iran’s nuclear program. Of course, more than one person has pointed out to me the need for caution when attaching the drive to one’s laptop, however tantalizing the drive’s contents.

Sorry that it has taken longer than expected for blogging to resume; the week’s been busier than expected.

My token offering for today is a “series of papers”:http://www.cmc.sandia.gov/papers-reports.htm from Sandia’s Cooperative Monitoring Center to which a colleague recently drew my attention. I haven’t had a chance to dig through them, but many look interesting.

Well, probably not. I will be on travel. There are other things to read.