Iran ‘expanding nuclear activities’
Iran has stepped up its defiance of the UN by expanding its nuclear enrichment activities, the UN’s nuclear watchdog said today.
The International Atomic Energy Agency’s findings have set the stage for further sanctions against Iran, which insists its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes.
“Iran has not suspended its enrichment-related activities,” an IAEA report said. “[They] have continued with the operation of their pilot fuel enrichment plant and with construction of their [planned industrial underground] enrichment plant.”
The UN security council has twice imposed sanctions on Iran, starting last December, when Tehran rejected an offer of aid in exchange for a halt in uranium enrichment.
With the council’s latest deadline for Iranian compliance ending tomorrow, today’s report could pave the way for a new round of talks on fresh measures within days.
“Unless Iran addresses long-outstanding verification issues, and implements … required transparency measures, the agency will not be able to fully reconstruct the history of Iran’s nuclear programme and provide assurances about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran or about the exclusively peaceful nature of that programme,” the report said.
Meanwhile, the US has assembled nine warships off the Iranian coast to perform drills in what is the largest daytime assembly of ships in the Gulf since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
In response, the Iranian defence minister, Mostafa Mohammad Najjar - who was not notified of the drills - said his country would resist any threat by its enemies.
Today’s report came after Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the IAEA, faced criticism for saying that attempts to prevent Iran from developing its enrichment process were obsolete because it had already done so.
Mr ElBaradei said the security council should focus on negotiating to limit the programme to a level short of “industrial scale” to prevent Iran from constructing nuclear weapons.
“We believe they pretty much have the knowledge about how to enrich,” Mr ElBaradei told the New York Times last week. “From now, it’s simply a question of perfecting that knowledge. People will not like to hear it, but that’s a fact.”
The US, British, French and German ambassadors to the IAEA plan to formally complain that the comments “were not helpful”, a US official said.
In the past, Mr ElBaradei has clashed with the US - but his latest remarks disturbed officials in both Washington and Europe because they were interpreted as bolstering Tehran at a critical time.
Iran has vowed not to freeze its quest for atomic energy before, during or even as an outcome of negotiations.
The latest UN sanctions package - passed unanimously by the security council on March 24 - included a ban on Iranian arms exports and the freezing of assets of several leaders of the Revolutionary Guard and Iran’s fifth biggest bank.
Meanwhile, the new French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, said Iran must decide whether it wanted to cooperate with the international community or face new sanctions.
“I for my part think one should not hesitate to toughen the sanctions,” Mr Sarkozy told the German monthly magazine Cicero. Iran has announced plans to run 54,000 centrifuges to produce enriched uranium - enough for dozens of nuclear warheads.
