Follow-Up on PolitiFact, Where Iran Deal Facts Only Sort Of Matter

Last month, the Tampa Bay Times' fact-checking site PolitiFact published an post debunking some outrageous claims made by presidential candidate Senator Ted Cruz about the Iran deal. While PolitiFact's assessment of Cruz's claims were correct, a number of details about the deal itself, as presented in the article, were problematic.

So I wrote my own article addressing these errors and contacted PolitiFact editor Lou Jacobson, who co-authored the Ted Cruz piece, asking for a correction to be made. After all, considering PolitiFact is a valuable resource whose very existence - by definition - relies on and respects accuracy, it is vital they address the mistakes they themselves publish in their own fact-checks.

After corresponding briefly with Jacobson and his own editor, Aaron Sharockman, I was informed that PolitiFact would indeed be issuing a correction on its article. The erroneous PolitiFact claim that the deal compels "Iran to give up 97 percent of its stockpile of highly enriched uranium, the kind needed to make nuclear weapons," would be replaced with the less inaccurate statement that, under the deal, "Iran will be required to reduce its stockpile of enriched uranium by 97 percent."

The update was also accompanied by an official correction:

Well, to be accurate, the "previous version" actually described the uranium differently, not so much the reduction. The original fact-check, as mentioned above, wrongly identified Iran's stockpile as containing "highly enriched uranium, the kind needed to make nuclear weapons." It does not. Iran has never ever enriched uranium to weapons-grade levels; all fissile material ever stockpiled in Iran has been low-enriched uranium, suitable only for reactor fuel and medical research.

Nevertheless, the correction is certainly a welcome change and my gratitude goes out to PolitiFact, Mr. Sharockman and Mr. Jacobson for addressing this mistake, even if the reason for the correction was deliberately obscured.

But that was only one of the many mistakes PolitiFact made that I wrote about. No other errors were corrected (or even acknowledged in my correspondence with the editors).

For instance, the PolitiFact claims that, by virtue of the multilateral agreement with the P5+1, Iran will "cease production of plutonium, the other element that can be used to build a bomb" and that "[k]nown nuclear sites would be monitored for 15 years to confirm compliance" remain untouched in the article, despite both being false and misleading.

Here are the facts:

• Iran has never produced plutonium, doesn't have the facilities to do so, and has long declared its intention never to build such facilities. As such, it is not accurate to state that, under the agreement, Iran will "cease" doing something it's never done.

• Iran's "known nuclear sites" are already under strict IAEA inspection and monitoring, and this will continue long after the terms of the JCPOA (the official name for the Iran deal) concludes - this extends far beyond the 15 years claimed by PolitiFact. IAEA safeguards agreements with Iran are permanent, and are separate from and not subject to stipulations of the deal. It is thus misleading to claim that declared, safeguarded sites will only be monitored "for 15 years to confirm compliance."

It remains incumbent upon PolitiFact to correct all of its errors if it wishes to live up to its own name.

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Who Fact-Checks The Fact-Checkers?:PolitiFact and Ted Cruz Both Get the Iran Deal Wrong

Presidential candidate Ted Cruz and the Tampa Bay Times' Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-checking website PolitiFact were at each others' throats last week over recent comments Cruz has made about the nuclear deal - officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) - reached this past July between Iran and six world powers.

The main reason for the spat is simple: Ted Cruz lies a lot.

In response to a particularly blustery claim made by the Texas Senator at a hilariously insane rally opposing the nuclear accord, which restricts Iran's nuclear energy and uranium enrichment programs - reaffirming their purely peaceful nature - in exchange for a lifting of international sanctions, PolitiFact decided to investigate whether Cruz was telling the truth. (Spoiler: he wasn't, and rarely does.)

At the rally, and afterward on Twitter, Cruz declared that the JCPOA "will facilitate and accelerate the nation of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons." Even for a demagogic blowhard like Cruz, this is a ridiculous thing to say. Beyond the fact that we've heard for over three decades that the advent of an Iranian nuke is just around the corner - only a few years, maybe two years, a year and half, 12 months, six weeks away! - and these estimates have never come close to fruition, nor have they ever been based upon a single shred of credible evidence, the enhanced monitoring and inspections implemented under the new deal effectively prevent any hypothetical Iranian move toward weaponizing its program for at least a decade, probably far longer. And that's if Iran does the thing it's never ever done: decide to build a nuclear weapon, and to do so at exactly the time when its program is under the most intensive scrutiny of any nation's program in history. The claim is absurd on its face.

Needless to say, it wasn't too difficult for PolitiFact to judge this statement false.

But PolitiFact's own understanding of the parameters of the Iran deal itself was surprisingly rife with errors, something that absolutely shouldn't happen in a fact-checking article. The details, relayed by the website's editors Louis Jacobson and W. Gardner Selby, were rendered this way:

Specifically, the deal requires Iran to give up 97 percent of its stockpile of highly enriched uranium, the kind needed to make nuclear weapons, as well as most of the centrifuges it can use to enrich uranium. In addition, Iran agrees to only enrich uranium to a level unsuitable for weapons for 15 years, and to cease production of plutonium, the other element that can be used to build a bomb. Known nuclear sites would be monitored for 15 years to confirm compliance, and inspectors would have the ability to enter undeclared sites suspected of nuclear use, though with possible delays of up to 24 days.

PolitiFact gets a bunch wrong here.

"Highly enriched uranium"

First, the deal does not require "Iran to give up 97 percent of its stockpile of highly enriched uranium, the kind needed to make nuclear weapons." Why not? Because Iran doesn't have any highly enriched uranium to give up.

Jacobson and Selby appear to have confused - or conflated - low enriched uranium with highly enriched uranium.

This is no small matter and, unfortunately, is a common mistake made by commentators, politicians, journalists, and pundits who should all know better. The fact is Iran has never enriched uranium above 19.75 percent U-235, which is defined by the IAEA itself as "low enriched uranium." This is quite uncontroversial - no one, from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to the U.S. intelligence community to the Israeli Mossad to non-proliferation experts, has ever claimed that Iran has produced a stockpile of highly enriched uranium (HEU). Iran has only ever produced low enriched uranium (LEU) - to levels of under 5 percent and under 20 percent - useful only as reactor fuel or medical isotopes, respectively, not bombs (which require enrichment levels of over 90 percent).

Furthermore, the IAEA has confirmed that, "since 20 January 2014, Iran has not produced UF6 enriched above 5% U-235 and all of its stock of UF6 enriched up to 20% U-235 has been further processed through downblending or conversion." Additionally, as the agency has long confirmed, "All of the enrichment related activities at Iran’s declared facilities are under Agency safeguards, and all of the nuclear material, installed cascades, and feed and withdrawal stations at those facilities are subject to Agency containment and surveillance."

What the JCPOA actually does, in this regard, is limit Iranian enrichment of uranium to no more than 3.67 percent U-235 LEU and, as the Arms Control Association notes, eliminates roughly 97 percent of Iran's current LEU stockpile, capping it at a mere 300kg for 15 years.

"Production of plutonium"

PolitiFact also erroneously claims that, under the deal, Iran must "cease production of plutonium," which makes no sense considering Iran has never produced plutonium. As I noted earlier this month, "Before it can be stockpiled, plutonium must first be extracted and reprocessed from the spent uranium fuel of an operational nuclear reactor. Iran has never done this and doesn't even have a reprocessing plant. Iran has literally never extracted plutonium from a reactor core, let alone stockpiled it..."

In short, Iran can't "cease" doing something it's not - and never has been - doing.

Inspections

PolitiFact's explanation of inspection parameters under the JCPOA is also disingenuous. By claiming that Iran's "[k]nown nuclear sites would be monitored for 15 years to confirm compliance," PolitiFact is implying that Iran's nuclear infrastructure is not already under safeguards and constant monitoring, which it is - and has been for years, if not decades. Iran's nuclear facilities have long been subject to the most intrusive and consistent inspection regime in the world.

The deal only strengthens this regime, allowing constant and immediate access to all declared nuclear sites and also to non-nuclear sites like centrifuge assembly workshops, centrifuge rotor production workshops and storage facilities, and uranium mines and mills, which, as nonproliferation expert Jeffrey Lewis has pointed out, "are not safeguarded anywhere else in the world." This enhanced and unique access will last, in many cases, as long as 20-25 years.

PolitiFact's language also suggests inspections of nuclear sites will cease after a decade and a half. This is totally wrong. In fact, all of Iran's declared nuclear sites will remain under IAEA safeguards and surveillance in perpetuity, as mandated by the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, to which Iran has been a party since its advent in 1968.

Even PolitiFact's understanding of "possible delays of up to 24 days" before "undeclared sites" are accessed by inspectors is dubious, as this is the absolute maximum amount of time that access to a potentially suspect facility could be delayed through a process agreed to by all seven international parties (eight, if you include the European Union) to the JCPOA.

In truth, under the deal, the IAEA's request to visit a suspect site "triggers a 24-day clock under which Iran and the IAEA have 14 days to come to an agreement on access. If not, the Joint Commission, created by the JCPOA, has seven days to make a determination on access, and if at least five of the eight members vote to allow the IAEA to investigate, Iran has three days to comply," explains the Arms Control Association. At that point, the very first time this review protocol is tested to this extent, there's a good chance the process of re-implementing sanctions on Iran would begin, rendering the tenets of the JCPOA inoperable and signaling the imminent, if not immediate, collapse of the agreement altogether.

Who Fact-Checks the Fact-Checkers?

PolitiFact has rightly taken Ted Cruz to task for his false claims.

[In a petulant retort to being fact-checked, Cruz published even more lies in The National Review, declaring, among other things, that Iran cheated on a previous nuclear accord (it didn't), that Iran is allowed "in certain circumstances" to "inspect itself, and report back on the 'results'" (it's not, not even close), and that the deal enables "Iran to finish their ongoing ICBM research and develop a missile that can carry a nuclear warhead across the Atlantic to America" (which is, simply, asinine).]

But in its own explanation of the Iran deal, PolitiFact repeats a number of baseless canards that have often been used by anti-diplomacy Iran hawks and deal-supporting liberal interventionists alike to mislead the public about the Iranian nuclear program and its capabilities.

For a "fact-checking journalism website aimed at bringing you the truth in politics," PolitiFact should make sure to check itself before it, well, you know.

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A version of this article was crossposted by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) on September 25, 2015.

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UPDATE:

October 27, 2015 - Due to this post, PolitiFact issued a correction. But it didn't go far enough. Check out my update here.

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More Misleading Reporting on the Iran Deal and 'Heavy Water'

It's not hard to learn what heavy water is, folks. Just look it up.

Nuclear technology is complicated. Explaining the minutiae of enrichment levels, dual-use material, and the legal frameworks of international law and supervision is hard to do. So is good journalism. Deadlines, reader accessibility and editorial demands put a lot of pressure on reporters who cover a range of topics to use shorthand and shirk details.

The combination of the two, therefore, can be deadly. Reporters covering the Iranian nuclear program and, namely, the terms of the multilateral nuclear deal - known officially as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) - signed by Iran and six world powers a year ago don't have it easy.

But that's still no excuse for getting basic facts wrong. Errors and misrepresentations, especially in media coverage, have a tremendously negative impact on the public's ability to know the truth. Nowhere is this more apparent than in reporting about the Iranian nuclear issue, where news and commentary outlets routinely publish egregiously incorrect information without fact-checking or correction.

These mistakes are endemic and bipartisan; supporters of diplomacy with Iran get things wrong almost as often as those avidly pushing for more sanctions and regime change. This is why, for instance, the false narrative that the deal "stopped" Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon is so common among deal boosters, despite the fact that Iran was not weaponizing its nuclear energy program in the first place (and therefore there was no "weapon" or "weapons program" to "stop").

A 2013 University of Maryland study found that when media "coverage did address Iranian nuclear intentions and capabilities, it did so in a manner that lacked precision, was inconsistent over time, and failed to provide adequate sourcing and context for claims."

Sadly, with the Iran deal now a year old, nothing much has changed.

In a July 12 Foreign Policy dispatch on a failed Republican scheme to pass new sanctions on Iran before the summer recess, senior reporter John Hudson mentioned an effort to ban the United States from purchasing heavy water from Iran.

In an apparent effort to explain an unfamiliar term to his readers, Hudson describes "heavy water" as "a byproduct from the production of nuclear energy." This is incorrect.

Heavy water is actually just a denser form of normal water, containing a hydrogen isotope called deuterium, which acts as both a moderator and coolant in the nuclear fuel process. It is not fissile material. It poses absolutely no danger and has no military capabilities. It can not make bombs, nor is it a necessary component of the bomb-making process. Heavy water can literally be consumed just as regular H₂0, although that would be a particularly pricey way to quench one's thirst.

Because heavy water is so benign, the material is not typically subject to IAEA monitoring or safeguards.

The reason heavy water is even a topic of conversation when it comes to the Iranian nuclear program is because, before the JCPOA was signed, Iran was in the process of constructing a heavy water research reactor at its Arak facility. Heavy water reactors are fueled using natural uranium rather than enriched uranium. These reactors are said to pose a potentially enhanced proliferation threat due to the amounts of plutonium produced as a byproduct of their spent nuclear fuel (which is more than what naturally occurs in spent fuel from other reactors), material that could then be separated from the irradiated fuel and further processed to weapons-grade levels.

The heavy water reactor at Arak was never operational. It has never been fed with uranium, never been turned on, never produced even one Watt of energy or a single atom of plutonium. Iran has no reprocessing facilities to turn its nuclear waste into weapons-grade material and has, for years now, committed never to build any.

As part of the nuclear deal, Iran also agreed to deliberately minimize the plutonium production capabilities of its reactors and avoid all production of weapons-grade plutonium in the future. In January 2016, Iran removed the reactor core from the Arak plant and filled it with concrete, thus rendering it unusable.

Furthermore, the deal specifies that, even though it will still use heavy water as a moderator, the "redesigned and rebuilt Arak reactor will not produce weapons grade plutonium" and that "[a]ll spent fuel from Arak will be shipped out of Iran for the lifetime of the reactor."

Contrary to what Hudson writes, heavy water is not a byproduct of nuclear energy production. Saying so makes it sound far more ominous, and linked directly to the hypothetical production of nuclear weapons.

This is the difference just a few misinformed words make.

Hudson isn't the only one to get this wrong. Vox does it all the time.

An Associated Press report from March 2016 used this misleading description: "Heavy water, formed with a hydrogen isotope, has research and medical applications, but can also be used to produce weapons-grade plutonium."

The same month, Joe Cirincione, a nonproliferation expert who heads the Ploughshares Fund, touted the success of the Iran deal in a piece for Politico. Unfortunately, he relied on a number of explicit falsehoods to make his point. Claiming that "we just stopped Iran from getting the bomb," Cirincione explained that, as part of the deal, "Iran ripped out centrifuges, shipped out uranium and filled the core of its new plutonium reactor with concrete." Philip W. Yun, executive director of Ploughshares, repeated this formulation in a June article in the Chronicle of Philanthropy.

Even the fact-checking Goliath PolitiFact gets it wrong. In an April 2016 fact-check, heavy water is described alarmingly and erroneously as "material is a key component of making nuclear weapons and producing nuclear energy." That's pants-on-fire wrong.

Facts are important. It's about time reporters and experts starting getting them right.

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UPDATE:

July 16, 2016 - It appears that, following my tweet (below; forgive the "nyclear" typo!) about Hudson's incorrect description of heavy water, the Foreign Policy article was updated to remove the offending reference.

.@John_Hudson calls heavy water a "byproduct" of the nyclear fuel cycle. It's not; it's a non-nuclear coolant. https://t.co/9spcniPPt7

— Nima Shirazi (@WideAsleepNima) July 13, 2016

The sentence has now been edited, omitting the description of heavy water as "a byproduct from the production of nuclear energy." It appears this way now:

A note added to the bottom of the article reads only, 'This post has been updated."

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Kaine, Pence and Their VP Debate Fact-Checkers Are All Wrong on Iran

(David Goldman / AP Photo)

If anything was made clear during the Vice Presidential debate between Tim Kaine and Mike Pence it's that neither man knows much about the Iranian nuclear program. And neither do the fact-checkers tasked with judging the candidates' own statements about it.

During the course of 90 excruciating minutes, Tim Kaine accused Iran of "racing toward a nuclear weapon" and repeatedly boasted that his running mate Hillary Clinton was responsible for "stopping" that "nuclear weapons program without firing a shot." Meanwhile, Donald Trump's veep pick Mike Pence kept insisting that the Iran deal, signed by six world powers and Iran in July 2015, effectively guaranteed that "Iran will someday become a nuclear power because there's no limitations once the period of time of the treaty comes off."

None of these claims is even remotely true.

Obviously, claims put forth by both Kaine and Pence rest on a wholly false presumption: that Iran is/was desperately trying to acquire nuclear weapons and has/had an active "nuclear weapons program" to achieve that goal.

As I have written endlessly:

International intelligence assessments have consistently affirmed that Iran has no nuclear weapons program. What Iran does have, however, is a nuclear energy program with uranium enrichment facilities, all of which are under international safeguards, strictly monitored and routinely inspected by the IAEA. No move to divert nuclear material to military or weaponization purposes has ever been detected. This is consistently affirmed by U.S., British, Russian, and even Israeli intelligence, as well as the IAEA. In fact, the IAEA itself has said there is "no concrete proof" Iran's nuclear program "has ever had" a military component.

Eventually, due to the distinct and consistent lack of evidence for any nuclear weapons program, the United States echo chamber sidelined accusations of an active militarization program in favor of the round-about, jargon-laden claim that Iran was "intending to obtain the capability" to make nukes, rather than actually trying to make nukes. This, conveniently, put Iran in the position of having to prove a negative, despite being under the strictest IAEA inspection regime in history and providing access to its facilities above and beyond what was required by law.

The rhetorical bait-and-switch was plain for all to see when Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta admitted in 2012, "Are they trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No." For good propagandistic measure, however, he added, "But we know that they're trying to develop a nuclear capability, and that's what concerns us."

Around the same time, an unnamed U.S. intelligence official told the Washington Post that no decision had even been made in Iran to pursue nuclear weapons, explaining, "Our belief is that they are reserving judgment on whether to continue with key steps they haven't taken regarding nuclear weapons."

Early the following year, Panetta begrudgingly reaffirmed this assessment on Meet The Press. "What I've said, and I will say today," Panetta told Chuck Todd, "is that the intelligence we have is they have not made the decision to proceed with the development of a nuclear weapon. They're developing and enriching uranium. They continue to do that." He added, "I think-- I think the-- it's a clear indication they say they're doing it in order to develop their own energy source." The NPT guarantees signatory states the right to enrich uranium for nuclear energy production. There is nothing illegal or sinister about this and Iran has operated its enrichment program openly and under IAEA safeguards.

Panetta, in response to Todd's repeated goading, eventually disputed the entire premise so often repeated by politicians and pundits: "I can't tell you they're in fact pursuing a weapon because that's not what intelligence says we-- we-- we're-- they’re doing right now," he said.

U.S. intelligence assessments have consistently affirmed this. In 2012, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told a Congressional committee, "We assess 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." This finding has been repeated year in and year out.

Even the final report on outstanding allegations made by the United States and Israeli governments by the IAEA, released last December, was sensationalized to the point of absurdity. At most, the agency found, the "Possible Military Dimensions" of its nuclear energy program or the "Alleged Studies" that Iran had long been accused of conducting turned out to be merely "feasibility and scientific studies"(of nuclear and non-nuclear technology that has proven civilian uses), not active procedures or policies directed at making atomic bombs.

Moreover, and more importantly, this supposed research involved absolutely no diversion of nuclear material for non-peaceful uses, and therefore were not violations of either Iran's commitments under its safeguards agreement with the IAEA or a breach of the NPT itself.

By actually assessing the facts, it is beyond clear that, despite decades of alarmism, hype and hysteria, Iran never violated the NPT, and there has never been any evidence of the existence of an "Iranian nuclear weapons program."

Beyond this, Tim Kaine's claims that Hillary Clinton was the driving force behind diplomacy with Iran are absurd. Quite the contrary, the breakthrough for talks - that is, the Obama administration deciding to drop the "zero enrichment" demand that had soured diplomatic efforts since 2005 - occurred despite Clinton's insistence that Iran be denied their inalienable nuclear rights. This shift in policy was due primarily to the efforts of John Kerry, both as Senate Foreign Relations Chair during Obama's first term and then as Secretary of State after Clinton left the office. 

But Kaine wasn't alone in his mistakes. Even fact-checkers didn't get their facts straight.

For instance, in response to Kaine's claim that Clinton "worked a tough negotiation with nations around the world to eliminate the Iranian nuclear weapons program without firing a shot," PBS National Security Correspondent Mary Louise Kelly wrote this:

The deal slowed but does not eliminate Iran's nuclear weapons program. Iran agreed to eliminate its stockpile of medium enriched uranium, to dramatically cut its stockpile of low enriched uranium, and to allow international inspectors to visit nuclear facilities — in exchange for relief from sanctions.

Again, Iran didn't have a nuclear weapons program for anyone to eliminate. Furthermore, there is no such thing as "medium enriched uranium," according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. There's only low and high - Iran has never, ever, enriched uranium close to weapons-grade levels. Also misleading is Kelly's assertion that the deal allowed "international inspectors to visit nuclear facilities," considering that IAEA inspectors already had access to Iran's nuclear infrastructure long before the deal was struck.

Other fact-checkers - from ABC to the New York Times - were similarly wrong on the facts, as noted by longtime Iran watcher Ali Gharib:

Hillary Clinton didn't help to eliminate Iran’s nuclear weapons program because the talks weren't about eliminating Iran's nuclear weapons program because Iran didn't have a nuclear weapons program at that time to eliminate. Kaine, therefore, did exaggerate Clinton's role: he credited her with participating in talks that didn't actually do what he said they did.

Pence's insistence that the Iran deal failed at its primary mission was also wholly false. "The goal was always that we would only lift the sanctions if Iran permanently renounced their nuclear [ambitions]," said Pence, adding, "They have not renounced their nuclear ambitions. When the deal's period runs out, there is no limitation on them obtaining weapons."

Everything about this is wrong. Iran has publicly, repeatedly and consistently renounced any and all interest in acquiring nuclear weapons on legal, strategic and moral grounds for literally decades. Therefore, the phrase "their nuclear ambitions," which Pence uses as a dog whistle for "pursuit of nuclear weapons," doesn't mean what Pence thinks it does.

As Gharib has also pointed out, Iran's commitment not to obtain nukes goes well beyond the stipulations of the Iran deal. Even after the terms expire (and some of the most important ones never do), "having a nuclear weapons program will still be prohibited not only by Iran's signature to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty but also by express promises the country made as part of the nuclear deal itself. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (the Iran deal's formal name) says, 'Iran reaffirms that under no circumstances will Iran ever seek, develop or acquire any nuclear weapons.' It's plain as day, right there in the first paragraph. And there's no sunset clause on that pledge; it stays in force forever."

The facts are plain, and are essential when discussing issues like this. But when it comes to Iran and American politics, there is no depth to which the propaganda won't sink, with fact-checkers being dragged down with it.

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For more on campaign trail nonsense, check out these past posts:

Pandermonium! At AIPAC, Trump Makes Same Promise on Jerusalem We've Been Hearing Since 1972

Putting A Lid On Clinton's Erroneous Iranian "Nuclear Weapons Program" Talking Point

Clinton's Efforts Were Detrimental, Not Instrumental, to Reaching a Deal with Iran

PolitiFact and Ted Cruz Both Get the Iran Deal Wrong

Presidential Poll Site Gets Iran Deal Totally Wrong

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