It seems that CNN's wire staff is eager to add its voice to the Iran war chant--at least judging from an article it published on Sunday. The piece contains the following passage concerning the recent IAEA report on Iran's nuclear program:
The energy agency reported in November that it can no longer verify that the Iranian nuclear program remains peaceful ...
Oh, CNN. I know you tried really hard to make this statement so convoluted that no one would bother disputing it. You are pretty devious, I must say. However, you failed. I am so calling you out on this.
First, let's take a look at the passage of the IAEA report that I believe is the source of CNN's error:
While the Agency continues to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material at the nuclear facilities and LOFs declared by Iran under its Safeguards Agreement, as Iran is not providing the necessary cooperation, including by not implementing its Additional Protocol, the Agency is unable to provide credible assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran, and therefore to conclude that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities.
The first part of this passage asserts that the IAEA actually does continue to verify that all nuclear material under safeguards in Iran is not being diverted from peaceful activities. That means that all of the material that the IAEA knows about in Iran is being used for peaceful purposes.
The second part is more tricky. What the IAEA is saying is that they cannot verify that there is no undeclared nuclear material in Iran, and thus, they cannot verify that all nuclear material in Iran is being used in peaceful programs, since there could be undeclared material. Here, the IAEA is taking advantage of a weakness in all inductive arguments: no matter how many instances of a thing one observes, or how much of a large area one has canvassed, there is always a possibility, however small, that there is an unobserved instance that counters your conclusion. Philosophers often refer to this as a "black swan", which derives from the discovery of a counterexample to the old inductive argument that all swans are white. It is important to note that the possibility of there being a "black swan" of undeclared nuclear material is an epistemic one and it derives from a lack of knowledge, not any positive knowledge. Indeed, the IAEA's allegations about there being undeclared nuclear material in Iran end here--they have no definitive evidence that suggests that there is nuclear material that they are not able to inspect. Therefore, this statement by the IAEA is vacuous.
Furthermore, to say that the IAEA "can no longer verify" that the Iranian nuclear program is peaceful implies that there has been a change in the IAEA's assessment of the nature and aims of the program. But this is false. The IAEA is merely alleging at this point that Iran is conducting nuclear weapons work. They have no proof--and that is right there in the report (note the emphasized hedges, which are mine):
There are ... indications that some activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device continued after 2003, and that some may still be ongoing.
A second issue with this article is in the following passage:
The United States and its allies think Tehran is trying to develop nuclear weapons. Iran denies it.
The US and Israel intelligence agencies actually do not believe that Iran is currently trying to develop a nuclear weapon. As Leon Panetta said a few weeks ago, "Are they trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No." US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has said, "We continue to assess [that] Iran is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons in part by developing various nuclear capabilities that better position it to produce such weapons, should it choose to do so. We do not know, however, if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons." Even Israeli intelligence agrees that Iran has not made a decision to develop nuclear weapons.
I emailed CNN yesterday about these concerns, but received no response. If you'd like to join me in writing, please do.