The head of the world’s nuclear watchdog declared recently that he could not 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 longrunning 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, said the IAEA was not in a position to assert that Iran’s nuclear programme was ”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 complained.
But he was also unable to state unequivocally that Iran was embarked on a nuclear weapons programme. Rather, the tone of the report was one of suspicion, criticism and exasperation that Iran was not showing adequate ”transparency” in its dealings with the nuclear inspections. Although the IAEA had 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.”
Following a number of confrontational IAEA meetings in Vienna and two emergency sessions of the 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 in February 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 the 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. Rather, the Security Council was expected to take up ElBaradei’s complaints and demand that Iran cooperate fully with the agency and reinstate a freeze on uranium enrichment, which was recently abandoned when two years of negotiations between Iran and Britain, France and Germany broke down.
The IAEA official in charge of the Iranian investigation returned to Vienna from a three-day trip to Tehran earlier this week during 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 last weekend 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 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 on its soil. Iran said it would accept the Russian offer only if it could continue work on uranium enrichment. — Â