The former Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in a new published report that he had not seen "a shred of evidence" that Iran was "building nuclear-weapons facilities and using enriched materials," Center for Research on Globalization reported with reference to The New-Yorker's article by journalist Seymour Hersh titled "Iran And The Bomb".
Mohamed ElBaradei, the Nobel Peace Prize recipient who spent 12 years at the IAEA, told Hersh, "I don't believe Iran is a clear and present danger. All I see is the hype about the threat posed by Iran."
El Baradei, who is now a candidate for the presidency of Egypt, added, "The core issue is mutual lack of trust. I believe there will be no solution until the day that the United States and Iran sit down together to discuss the issues and put pressure on each other to find a solution."
Hersh points out that the last two U.S. National Intelligence Estimates (N.I.E.s) on Iranian nuclear progress "have stated that there is no conclusive evidence that Iran has made any effort to build the bomb since 2003."
An N.I.E. Report supposedly represents the best judgment of the senior offices from all the major American intelligence agencies.
The latest report, which came out this year and remains highly classified, is said by Hersh to reinforce the conclusion of the last N.I.E. Report of 2007, that "Iran halted weaponization in 2003."
A retired senior intelligence officer, speaking of the latest N.I.E. Report, told Hersh, "The important thing is that nothing substantially new has been learned in the last four years, and none of our efforts-informants, penetrations, planting of sensors-leads to a bomb."
Hersh quotes W. Patrick Lang, a retired Army intelligence officer and former ranking Defense Intelligence Agency(DIA) analyst on the Middle East as saying that after the disaster in Iraq, "Analysts in the intelligence community are just refusing to sign up this time for a lot of baloney."
The website Politico.com reports in its May 31 issue that a senior Administration intelligence official asserted Hersh's article was nothing more than "a slanted book report."
The U.S. and other Western countries accuse Iran of developing nuclear weapons for military purposes under the guise of peaceful nuclear energy program. So far, the UN Security Council has adopted six resolutions, four of which involve economic and some political sanctions against Iran.