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Iran announced today that it had successfully tested a long-range missile capable of hitting Israel and US targets in the Gulf. The news comes days after new documents published by The Times of London suggesting that Iran was close to completing an atom bomb. The Times’ Catherine Philp who uncovered the documents talks with host Marco Werman.
- Catherine Philp’s article in The Times of London
- Iran denies Times newspaper ‘nuclear trigger’ report
- Background Brief: Nuclear standoff with Iran
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MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman, and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH. Iran said today that it’s successfully tested a long-range missile capable of hitting Israel and US targets in the Persian Gulf. Such a missile could potentially be used to deliver a nuclear weapon. That’s what the nuclear standoff with Iran is ultimately about. Earlier this week, the Times of London published a report that suggests Iran is in the final stages of producing a trigger for a nuclear weapon. The report quotes a confidential Iranian government memo. Western intelligence officials say they have not been able to authenticate that memo, though. The Times’ diplomatic correspondent Catherine Philp is on the story. She joins us from London. First of all, Catherine, recap for our listens what the memo actually says. It’s a two page in Persian neatly written memo. What’s the big revelation in it?
CATHERINE PHILP: The document that foreign intelligence agencies have told us they believe is from 2007 outlines a four year plan to test a device called a neutron initiator, the trigger that ignites a nuclear bomb. Thus far, we’ve had no evidence that Iran has worked on weapons since 2003, so this would be the first public evidence of a resumed weapons program since 2003.
WERMAN: And since your story came out, there have been a range of reactions to it. The Obama administration officials have praised it as a “fine piece of journalism.” Other analysts have said though essentially, “Wait a minute. We can’t actually authenticate these documents.” How do you respond to that?
PHILP: No one has knocked this story down yet, and I know that some people have been trying very hard. I did not rush into publishing this story, nor did my newspaper. I worked on this solidly for three weeks, trying to get to the kind of people that might have seen this document. In its original form, it’s been seen by very, very few people. We are very confident that it is– we’re as confident as we possibly can be that this is an authentic document.
WERMAN: Did you get any independent third party experts to look at the document and say it is indeed authentic?
PHILP: Absolutely. It’s a very, very technical document, and I have no qualifications in nuclear physics, so David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security, which is a highly respected organization in Washington, worked with me on this to really explain the significance of the document, to try and place it also in the context of what we already know about Iran’s nuclear program. And he found it extremely compelling.
WERMAN: You mentioned going to David Albright. Is that the same David Albright who was a weapons inspector in Iraq?
PHILP: Yes.
WERMAN: And was that the sole source? Was that enough in your opinion?
PHILP: I went to him as a technical expert, first and foremost. We have to go to intelligence agencies and the IAEA to find out if they had been given this document. That’s where the authentication came.
WERMAN: The New York Times in an article today is quoting “diplomats” not naming them, who raise the possibility that the publication of the memo on the Times of London website late Sunday could be part of an effort to raise international alarm over Iran’s intentions. What do you say to these unnamed diplomats?
PHILP: Well, I say that all leaks of information obviously have some motive behind it. But the issue is, what you do with that information once you’ve got it. I’d say specifically to the New York Times that they themselves have been used in this way by diplomats themselves. I mean, they were leaked the news that the Qom plant had been discovered and was about to be revealed at the end of the United Nations General Assembly this year. Look, we all know that this information is handed over by people who may or may not have motives in doing so, but the question is, what you do with once you’ve got it, how much integrity you bring to your work and the degree to which you try and authenticate it. We simply wouldn’t have published this if we didn’t feel that we had corroborating evidence from completely different sources that it was true.
WERMAN: We all know that journalists were burned when it came to assessing the intelligence that led up to the Iraq war, and obviously that’s led many reporters to be hyper vigilant when it comes to covering things like this, these documents. I imagine it played a role in your decision making.
PHILP: Yeah. Obviously the fiasco over 2003 was uppermost in my mind when I was doing this, and nobody wants to be taken for a ride with this kind of information.
WERMAN: Diplomatic correspondent, Catherine Philp, of the Times of London, reporting on Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Thanks very much for speaking with us.
PHILP: Thank you.
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