The head of the world’s nuclear watchdog declared on Monday night that he cannot give Iran’s nuclear programme a clean bill of health, blaming Tehran for frustrating almost three years of inspections and detective work by experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
The damning verdict delivered by Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the IAEA, set the scene for a diplomatic battle next week in Vienna when the IAEA’s 35-strong board is to take the long-running dispute to the United Nations Security Council in New York.
A confidential report by ElBaradei, supplied to Vienna diplomats ahead of next week’s meeting and obtained by The Guardian, says the IAEA is still not in a position to assert that Iran’s nuclear programme is ”entirely peaceful”.
”It is regrettable and a matter of concern that the uncertainties related to the scope and nature of Iran’s nuclear programme have not been clarified after three years of intensive agency verification,” ElBaradei complains.
But he is also unable to state unequivocally that Iran is embarked on a nuclear weapons programme. Rather, the tone of the report is one of suspicion, criticism and exasperation that Iran is not showing adequate ”transparency” in its dealings with the nuclear inspections.
Although the IAEA has not discovered ”any diversion of nuclear material to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices, the agency is not at this point in time in a position to conclude that there are no undeclared nuclear materials or activities in Iran”.
Patience
Following a number of confrontational IAEA meetings in Vienna and two emergency sessions of the IAEA board recently, international patience is running out with Iran. But the options available to the West in seeking to coerce Iran into scrapping its domestic nuclear fuel manufacture are limited and fraught with risk.
The IAEA board decided this month to refer the row to the Security Council, but also ruled that the UN’s supreme body should not do anything until after next week’s meeting in Vienna.
The ElBaradei report and any resolution agreed next week will be passed to the Security Council and form the basis for subsequent action.
The United States and European Union will use the ElBaradei report to try to marshal a consensus for tougher action. But they are also anxious not to alienate the Russians and the Chinese, who wield vetoes on the Security Council.
Diplomats in Vienna cautioned against talk of UN sanctions on Iran quickly. Rather, the Security Council is expected to take up ElBaradei’s complaints and demand that Iran cooperate fully with the agency and reinstate a freeze on uranium enrichment recently abandoned when two years of negotiations between Iran and Britain, France and Germany broke down.
Crisis
Three years ago, ElBaradei was stunned when he was granted access to Iran’s vast uranium-enrichment complex at Natanz. The discovery triggered an international crisis that has been escalating ever since. Iran was found to have been engaged in secret nuclear work for 18 years in breach of its international commitments under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
The IAEA official in charge of the Iranian investigation returned to Vienna from a three-day trip to Tehran on Monday at which Iran promised to answer previously dismissed questions about ”weaponisation” and the suspected junctures between Iran’s civil and military activities in the nuclear sphere.
Timed to coincide with the ElBaradei verdict, Iran on Sunday sought to forestall the criticism by announcing it had reached ”agreement in principle” with Russia on a compromise scheme for manufacturing Iranian nuclear fuel in Russia.
But, on Monday, statements from Tehran and Moscow were contradictory on the details of the deal. Brussels and the White House dismissed reports of a breakthrough agreement.
Germany accused Iran of tactical manoeuvring, aimed at sowing dissension among the major international powers. Russia said that for the deal to work, Iran has to forfeit uranium enrichment — the easiest route to a nuclear bomb — on its soil. Iran said it would accept the Russian offer only if it could continue work on uranium enrichment.
Pinch of green salt
In Tehran on Sunday, the IAEA’s top sleuth, Olli Heinonen, a Finn, sat down with Iranian officials for a chat about ”green salt”, a term used to describe uranium tetrafluoride.
As a result of that conversation, the Vienna agency is ”waiting for Iran to address the other topics which could have a military nuclear dimension”, says the ElBaradei report.
The suspicions about green salt have their roots in a laptop computer that diplomats in Vienna say was given to German intelligence agents in Tehran in 2004. The computer is said to have contained information on Iran’s nuclear programme, suggesting a link between its civil research and the military, fusing work on high explosives, uranium and missiles.
”False, fabricated, baseless,” the Iranians told Heinonen. — Guardian Unlimited Â