**IAEA Report CONTRADICTS MAJOR MEDIA Narrative on Iran**

[babylonsister]

QUICK! Someone tell Dick!

http://agonist.org/sean_paul_kelley/20070523/the_report_is_in

IAEA Report Contradicts Major Media Narrative On Iran


snip//

What is at issue here today is whether recent reports of Iranian breakthroughs in enrichment are true. Before today's report it was pretty clear the media's claims were not correct. The claims had been completely debunked by experts before the IAEA report came out. And yet the claims still managed to form the dominant media narrative, as this ABC Report reiterates:

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is expected to confirm Iran's rapid progress in advancing its uranium enrichment program in a report due tomorrow.

The only problem is that the report confirms no such thing. What the report details and conversations with arms control experts confirm is that the Iranians have made no major breakthroughs like that claimed by David E. Sanger of the New York Times. Furthermore, his story of May 15 was, as one expert put it, "misleading and sensationalized."

The relevant portions of the IAEA Report, released today, conclude:

Since the Director General's last report, Iran has fed approximately 260 kg of UF6 into the cascades at FEP. Iran has declared that it has reached enrichment levels up to 4.8% U-235 at FEP, which the Agency is in the process of verifying. On 13 May 2007, eight 164-machine cascades were operating simultaneously and were being fed with UF6; two other similar cascades had been vacuum tested and three more were under construction.

snip//

The claims filtering in and out of the media that Iran is one to two years away from producing bomb grade material are, to put it mildly, wildly inaccurate, as the report notes the Iranians are only reprocessing moderate amounts of UF6 to 4.8% U-235, and bomb grade material must be at least 80%.
Will the media correct its inflamed and sensationalized claims in light of this latest of IAEA reports?

[louis-t]

1. I knew it!! I knew something was wrong

with the way it was being reported.

[Dhalgren]

2. The US media is just out and out lying. You cannot even say that

they are simply misinformed - this is willful lying. It is a ridiculous thing to say that the "media" could be "misinformed", but they themselves have said this in regard to Iraq. Now, however, the media cannot say that they are being misled, because if they are going to speak about the IAEA report they cannot simply get their information from "White House" sources, but must corroborate the data with the IAEA - or they are willfully lying. This is the "smoking gun" of US media being used for internal propaganda.

[babylonsister]

3. Then we have to spread the word; this is going to KO-thanks for the

nudge.

[babylonsister]

4. .