Some facts about Israel’s claim on Iran’s nuclear program are just not adding up

By Paul Antonopoulos Last updated May 1, 2018

The following article is from a series of Tweets by Esfandyar Batmanghelidj.

1. The first slide of @netanyahu's powerpoint session tonight claimed that in 2017, "Iran moved its nuclear weapons files to a highly secret location in Tehran."
I think this slide was a give away for something.
Netanyahu didn't get his trove of images and files from #Iran. pic.twitter.com/hxvm8rLLIh
— Esfandyar Batmanghelidj (@yarbatman) April 30, 2018

2. Netanyahu shows a screenshot from Google Earth of Shurabad, a warehousing district in the southern reaches of Tehran. I'm no @bellingcat/@EliotHiggins OSINT ninja but let's see what is around there today.https://t.co/ZLticm3hIa pic.twitter.com/BNmIuMEbca
— Esfandyar Batmanghelidj (@yarbatman) April 30, 2018

3. The image Netanyahu used seems to be older than the most recent Google Earth satellite image, which is dated to 4/30/2018. One of the buildings next door has a shiny new red roof. Why use older imagery? pic.twitter.com/09Zkf6TlfY
— Esfandyar Batmanghelidj (@yarbatman) April 30, 2018

5. So how do we date the photo? Well let's look at the eye-catching red roofs (Photo 1). The red-roof warehouse facility was only completed between August 2014 (Photo 2) and October 2014 (Photo 3), as per unfinished middle structure. Can't be any earlier. pic.twitter.com/qKbGJw4XbN
— Esfandyar Batmanghelidj (@yarbatman) April 30, 2018

6. If we use the smaller red roof warehouse in the bottom left as a guide for how late the photo could have been taken, we get an upper bound of between October 2015 (Photo 1) and November 2015 (Photo 2). pic.twitter.com/mxQtnrYMZ4
— Esfandyar Batmanghelidj (@yarbatman) April 30, 2018

8. What was one critical element of the JPOA? It opened the door to IAEA's investigations and monitoring of Iran's nuke program. This was bolstered by a separate agreement between Iran and the IAEA that focused on "possible military dimensions" of the program. Text from JPOA: pic.twitter.com/rCgCRfVTOr
— Esfandyar Batmanghelidj (@yarbatman) April 30, 2018

9. As @ArmsControlNow reported in May 2014, Iran had by then "provided the IAEA with additional information related to the agency’s investigation into Iran’s activities possibly related to the development of nuclear weapons." https://t.co/A1ssVd9zNQ
— Esfandyar Batmanghelidj (@yarbatman) April 30, 2018

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10. It is clear that the "nuclear archive" was known to the IAEA at the precise time the satellite image of the facility was taken. This fits with the assessment of many experts that there was nothing new in Netanyahu's presentation. See thread:https://t.co/856EIe1cxw
— Esfandyar Batmanghelidj (@yarbatman) April 30, 2018

12. But perhaps even more likely, the IAEA inspectors themselves saved the birds-eye image as part of their reporting on the site. Google Earth and other "virtual globes" are a part of the IAEA toolkit. See this 2014 symposium paper:https://t.co/3S1HzARS0P
— Esfandyar Batmanghelidj (@yarbatman) April 30, 2018

13. This raises an interesting question. Did Israel hack the IAEA to access information Iran had willfully shared in 2014-2015 in order for Netanyahu to spin a story about a secret and unceasing nuke program? @AliVaez thinks that is the case. See thread:https://t.co/Uw0J3TO6QV
— Esfandyar Batmanghelidj (@yarbatman) April 30, 2018

15. So not only is Netanyahu blowing hot air on #Iran, he may have violated the integrity of an international agency to craft his second-rate powerpoint. He also did very little to hide the fact (though maybe that was intentional too).
— Esfandyar Batmanghelidj (@yarbatman) April 30, 2018

16. As a final OSINT lesson, the people working at this secret archive facility were lucky because "Garden Restaurant" at the end of the street looks pretty delicious. A 4 star review! pic.twitter.com/tMFNsqAANV
— Esfandyar Batmanghelidj (@yarbatman) April 30, 2018

17. Here is a really good and obvious point on Netanyahu's allegation that the archive moved there in 2017… Why show an image of the warehouse from 2014/2015? https://t.co/lr7OnuuDWF
— Esfandyar Batmanghelidj (@yarbatman) April 30, 2018

18. Here is corroboration of the OSINT Google Earth work in this thread from @trbrtc who actually is a @bellingcat expert. https://t.co/gTzlBXQj3Y
— Esfandyar Batmanghelidj (@yarbatman) April 30, 2018