Did Palantir’s Involvement with IAEA Lead To Israel Killing Innocents in Iran?
July 1—In a new article entitled “Palantir’s Shadow War On Iran,” published today, independent journalist Kit Klarenberg makes a very strong case that the adoption of Palantir’s Mosaic AI platform by the International Atomic Energy Agency was behind Israel’s war on Iran. There have been several internet posts in recent days that similarly speculated on Nazi-fascist financier Peter Thiel's Palantir's technology in creating the pretext for Israel's attack on Iran. The AI Mosaic platform has also been attacked for its role in surveillance of immigrants by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and their legally dubious methods of rounding up "targets" for deportation.
“The interpretation Palantir was one way or another involved in Israel’s illegal ‘preemptive’ war of aggression against Tehran is amply reinforced by the release of sensitive Israeli documents which were given to Iran’s intelligence ministry,” Klarenberg writes. “These files indicate the IAEA previously provided Israeli intelligence with the names of several Iranian nuclear scientists, who were subsequently assassinated. Additionally, current Association chief Rafael Grossi enjoys a close, long-running, clandestine relationship with Israeli officials. Subsequent disclosures could expose the IAEA’s dark alliance with Palantir.”
According to Iran’s PressTV, the documents which Klarenberg cited show that the IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi “has been closely cooperating with Israeli officials and has carried out their directives and orders in full… This raises questions over the neutrality and independence of the IAEA.” Iran’s PressTV report was dated June 12, the day before Israel launched its war of aggression against Iran, which included the assassinations of at least nine Iranian nuclear scientists and other scientists and military leaders.
After the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)—the nuclear deal between Iran, Germany, and the UN five permanent Security Council members, negotiated by then Secretary of State John Kerry and his chief negotiator Willaim Burns, later the CIA director in the Biden Administration—went into effect, the IAEA implemented an inspection regime in Iran that was the most intrusive in the agency’s history. Palantir’s Mosaic AI platform was “the analytical core” and “platform of choice” for it, sifting through data, and analyzing patterns to detect changes in program activity. As sources familiar with this work report, if various "garbage" data points are put into the analysis it is easy to skew results. The claim is this took place prior to the IAEA making a finding that Iran was potentially in non-compliance, which after voting a resolution to that effect, Grossi then pulled back from the claim and said--after the Israeli attack--that the finding was likely wrong.
According to Klarenberg, Bloomberg quoted Ali Vaez, International Crisis Group’s Iran Project director, as expressing concern about Mosaic analysing “dirty” data obtained by Mossad, “which prides itself on deception.” After all, “even a small amount of false information could trigger a flurry of unnecessary snap inspections and derail an agreement that took years to reach.” The broader the terms of Palantir’s work with the IAEA, the more the mission “appears as a fishing expedition,” Vaez fretted, suggesting Iran could become less willing “to open its doors to inspectors.” This has already happened as on June 25 the Iranian parliament unanimously passed legislation prohibiting IAEA access to Iran’s nuclear sites until the security of the Iranian program could be guaranteed. However, it is widely expected that if a deal is reached on its nuclear weapons program between the Trump Administration and Iran, the agency will be brought back in as part of an inspection regimen.
Concerns that the IAEA inspection program could “overstep the boundary between nuclear monitoring and intelligence-gathering,” were exacerbated “by Mosaic being based upon Palantir’s highly controversial ‘predictive-policing software.’” According to Klarenberg, “The risk of innocent Iranian civilians being made targets for surveillance, harassment, or even assassination created by erroneous data being fed into and/or pumped out by Mosaic is gargantuan.”
“If Mosaic informed the Zionist entity’s [Israel's] strategy during the 12 Day War, that may account for why individuals with no connection whatsoever to Iran’s civilian nuclear program were directly targeted for assassination,” Klarenberg concludes. “This includes Majid Tajan Jari, a prominent professor in the field of AI locally, slain in an Israeli strike on a residential building in Tehran on June 16..."