Yesterday, my cynicism got the better of me. I expressed doubt that anyone in the press compared the two IAEA reports, concluding that someone in either the IAEA or one of the missions was putting a little pressure on the Iranians. I was wrong.
One of the reporters has contacted me to clarify that it was the press that first raised the question of the discrepancy in a conference call with “UN officials” after having compared the current report and the previous one; and that it was only then that the “UN officials” explained and explicitly acknowledged the underestimate. (Unless you count what the reporter called “the gnomic reference” in the report to “measurement uncertainties” as an explicit acknowledgment.)
The reporter thinks, and I agree, that it is important to understand on this most conspiracy-prone of subjects that this was not a question of someone somewhere deciding to put a little extra pressure on the Iranians. The reporter noted that, for me to imply otherwise, was “not lousy reporting but less than perfect blogging.”
I have to agree.
I'd rather not | February 21, 2009
actually, the way it was told to me it was david albright of isis who raised the question and then the press picked up on it…
hass | February 23, 2009
Sorry, but the press has the major fault here. The media claim that Iran had “under reported” its uranium stockpile, and then to go on and cite people like Milhollin who exclaimed that “Its worse than we thought!” is simply a deliberate attempt to create the false impression that Iran had failed to meet an obligation to declare its uranium — which was simply not the case (NY TImes in particular was guilty of this) … and nevermind their insistence on claiming that IRan had enough uranium “for a bomb”
That’s bad reporting, plain and simple, and is inexcusable.