The draft IAEA report which suggests Iran may be working on nuclear warheads is troubling. While many people rightly criticize the CIA’s intelligence leading up to the Iraq War, the case of Iran is different in that the intelligence is not super-secret but rather generated by international inspectors and agencies. Iran’s own inconsistencies also generate suspicion. Here, a section of the Bipartisan Policy Commission’s “Meeting the Challenge” report on whether Iran’s energy needs justify its program is relevant. Also relevant is this excerpt from an AEI Middle East Outlook, “Can Iran Be Trusted?“:

Distrust over Iranian intentions is not based solely upon Iranian statements, but also upon Tehran’s actions. In December 2002, satellite photos confirmed reports that the Iranian government was building an undeclared uranium enrichment plant at Natanz, about 130 miles south of Tehran, and a heavy water plant at Khondab, about thirty-two miles northwest of the town of Arak.
In February 2003, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) sent a team of inspectors to confirm Iranian statements that “the activities of the Islamic Republic are totally transparent, clear, and peaceful.” Their subsequent report showed the depth of Iranian subterfuge. Iran had completed 164 centrifuges, was working on 1,000 more, and had designed the facility to house at least 50,000. Furthermore, the inspection revealed that Tehran had not acknowledged import of almost a ton of uranium from China, nor could the Iranian nuclear agency account for some missing processed uranium.
The Iranian government’s initial claims that its program was indigenous and entirely peaceful were false. As the IAEA noted, “The role of uranium metal in Iran’s declared nuclear fuel cycle still needs to be fully understood, since neither its light water reactors nor its planned heavy water reactors require uranium metal for fuel.”
After inspectors caught Iran in a lie, Iranian officials changed their story. They abandoned previous statements about the indigenous nature of their program and blamed the presence of highly enriched uranium traces on contaminated equipment imported into Iran, most likely from Pakistan. Patrick Clawson, coauthor of Checking Iran’s Nuclear Ambitions, observed, “If true, that means Iran has in fact had substantial foreign assistance and has been effective at concealing that assistance.”
Iranian scientists later acknowledged experimenting with the chemical separation of polonium. Polonium-210 is used to initiate the chain reaction leading to the detonation of a nuclear bomb. Although Iranian officials then assured the IAEA that they would shortly stop enriching uranium, they did not. Again, Tehran had lied to win short-term diplomatic goodwill. On August 10, 2004, Kharrazi said that Iran would not resume uranium enrichment unless there was a significant change in national interest. The pause in enrichment lasted just seven weeks more, even though there had been no significant change; if anything, with U.S. forces engaged in a bloody counterinsurgency in Iraq and gasoline prices at record highs, Tehran’s geopolitical position had grown more secure. Whether Kharrazi intended to deceive should be irrelevant from the Western perspective. In April 2004, the IAEA again found traces of bomb-grade uranium at other sites. Iran had lied again. On September 24, 2004, the IAEA Board of Governors met in Vienna, Austria, and after recalling a litany of Iranian mistruths, found that “Iran’s many failures and breaches of its obligations to comply with its NPT [Non-Proliferation Treaty] Safeguards Agreement . . . constitute non-compliance.”