Updated below
The Washington Posts alleges that the IAEA says foreign expertise has brought Iran to threshold of nuclear capability. This is of course, well, a lie. The IAEA has said nothing like that. It is simply an assertion made by the reporter and some "nuclear Iran" scare propagandists based on misinterpreting some factual points in the IAEA "evidence". What that "evidence" says is: Iran is working on nanodiamond production.
(And what would "to threshold of nuclear capability" actually mean? That Iran would be capable, like Japan, Brazil, the Netherlands or some 40 other countries, to build a nuclear bomb if it would choose to do so? What would be new, wrong or dangerous with that?)
The WaPo piece goes into some details, provided mostly by chief nuclear scare monger David Albright, about allegedly "new" stuff some secret services handed to the IAEA. To see how misleading these allegations are lets look at just one detail.
The report describes an Ukrainian expert for creating nanodiamands as "weapon scientist" and "nuclear scientist" even when all his published work is about the synthesizing of very small diamonds, not about nukes. Writes WaPo:
Documents and other records provide new details on the role played by a former Soviet weapons scientist who allegedly tutored Iranians over several years on building high-precision detonators of the kind used to trigger a nuclear chain reaction, the officials and experts said.
…
According to the intelligence provided to the IAEA, key assistance in both areas was provided by Vyacheslav Danilenko, a former Soviet nuclear scientist who was contracted in the mid-1990s by Iran’s Physics Research Center, a facility linked to the country’s nuclear program. Documents provided to the U.N. officials showed that Danilenko offered assistance to the Iranians over at least five years, giving lectures and sharing research papers on developing and testing an explosives package that the Iranians apparently incorporated into their warhead design, according to two officials with access to the IAEA’s confidential files.
Dr. Vyacheslav Danilenko is a well known Ukrainian ("former Soviet") scientist. But his specialties are not "weapon" or "nuclear" science, indeed there seems to be nothing to support that claim, but the production of nanodiamonds via detonations (ppt). According to the history of detonation nanodiamonds he describes in chapter 10 of Ultrananocrystalline Diamond – Synthesis, Properties, and Applications (pdf) he has worked in that field since 1962, invented new methods used in the process and is related with Alit, an Ukrainian company that produces nanodiamonds.
This is a detonation tank to create nanodiamonds, not a nuclear device.
Very small diamonds are useful for many purposes, like polishing optics or PC hard disks. That is why, for example, Drexel University in Philadelphia invited Danilenko for a talk at its Nanotechnology Institute:
On January 29, the AJ Drexel Nanotechnology Institute sponsored a Nanodiamond Lecture, “Nanodiamonds: Reactor Design and Synthesis,” by noted Ukrainian scientist Dr. Vyacheslav Danilenko. Dr. Danilenko was among the first to demonstrate detonation synthesis of diamonds and has more than 30 years experience in the design of reactors for the synthesis of nanodiamonds.
Some years ago Iran launched a big Nano Technology Initiative which includes Iranian research on detonation nanodiamonds (pdf). Iran is officially planing to produce them on industrial scale. It holds regular international conferences and invites experts on nanotechnology from all over the world. It is quite likely that famous international scientists in that field, like Dr. Danilenko, have been invited, gave talks in Iran and cooperate with its scientists.
Producing nanodiamonds via detonations uses large confined containers with water cooling, for which Danilenko seems to have a patent. The Ukrainian company he works with, Alit, shows such a detonation chamber on its webpage as does the picture above from the French-German nano-research company ISL. The detonation nanodiamond explanation thereby also fits with another allegation from the IAEA report:
The Associated Press reported that U.N. officials have acquired satellite photos of a bus-size steel container used by Iran for some of the explosives testing.
See the picture above and the one on the Alit web page. Iran having a "bus-size steel container" for explosive testing and research cooperation with Danilenko both fit very well with Iran's plans for nanodiamond production. They do not fit well with anything nuclear.
In his power-point presentation on detonation nanodiamonds on a industrial scale Danilenko recommends:
Use for industrial production of DND:• charges ≥ 20 kg, explosion under water in close pool (in heavy metal cover), laser initiation;• utilization of old ammunition under water in close pool;
Use of old ammunition in a closed water pool? Does that sound sound like something that "the Iranians apparently incorporated into their warhead design" as WaPo alleges? On what actual facts is that "apparently" innuendo based on? WaPo doesn't say anything about that.
But how or why should the production of detonation nanodiamonds relate to nuclear bombs at all? Why would someone even think they are related?
It may be because both use precisely timed detonations. But they do so on a very different scales and in very different conditions. A spherical implosion device for a nuclear weapon uses precisely timed detonations but it doesn't use a confined container, water cooling and old ammunition. The application is indeed very different. Besides that, there are much easier ways to make a nuclear bomb. And a lot of other physics fields, for example seismological research, also use precisely timed detonations. There is nothing special "nuclear" about them.
Just because a certain method like precise detonations is used in Iran, does not imply that it is used for what Mr. Albright and some "western agencies" claim. Nanodiamonds ain't nuclear weapons.
Danilenko's lifelong expertise is with nanodiamonds, not with nuclear weapons. It is much more plausible and fitting the evidence that Iran is working with him in his original capacity than in a field outside his main expertise.
If this is the general quality of the "new evidence" on Iran then it is quite worthless. This seems to be just more innuendo and dirt thrown towards Iran with the hope that something, anything might stick.
UPDATE Nov 8, 0:20 am EST
The Guardian is just now the first mainstream media to mention the nanodiamond part of the story:
Vyacheslav Danilenko, a Russian former atomic scientist, was alleged in the Washington Post to have provided advice on explosives to Iranian scientists which was incorporated into Tehran's design for a nuclear warhead.
Sources close to the IAEA confirmed he was the "foreign expert" referred to in its past reports on Iranian weaponisation.
It said he had given lectures over a number of years to Iranian specialists on how to rig simultaneous explosions: mastering such explosive force is critical in building an implosion-type nuclear device, in which high explosives compress highly enriched uranium or plutonium until it reaches critical mass, triggering a chain reaction. However, in interviews with the IAEA, Danilenko is said to have insisted that he had been under the impression his advice would be used for purely civilian applications of explosive technology, sources close to the agency said.
Although he did not specify what those applications were, he now works for a company called Nanogroup, based in the Czech Republic, which specialises in the use of explosives to make tiny diamonds for industrial purposes. On its website the company describes itself as "the first industrial manufacturer of nanodiamonds in the world market".
UPDATE 2 – Nov 9
The above was written before the IAEA report was published. Having read the now published report I find that The IAEA Confirms My Nanodiamond Analysis.