U.S., Allies Protest IAEA Comments on Iran

Four Western nations complained today to the top U.N. nuclear official that he was damaging their efforts to resolve the Iranian nuclear crisis, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, May 24).

Ambassadors from France, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States met today with International Atomic Energy Agency head Mohamed ElBaradei to protest his comments last week suggesting that the world may need to concede that Iran is capable of enriching its own uranium (see GSN, May 15).

“From a proliferation perspective, the fact of the matter is that one of the purposes of suspension — keeping them from getting the knowledge — has been overtaken by events,” he told the New York Times.  “The focus now should be to stop them from going to industrial-scale production, to allow us to do a full-court-press inspection and to be sure they remain inside the [Nuclear Nonproliferation] Treaty.”

The United States and West European powers have indicated that they would not accept any enrichment activities in Iran, fearing that the equipment could be used to produce material for nuclear weapons.

Today’s meeting in Vienna ran for “quite a long time,” said a diplomat, as the ambassadors pressed ElBaradei to back a U.N. Security Council demand that Iran freeze its nuclear activities.

“It’s fair to expect a senior U.N. official to support U.N. Security Council resolutions,” said another diplomat.

Other officials, however, said ElBaradei should be free to speak his mind.  One diplomat cautioned that a situation was arising that was reminiscent of the period before the Iraq War, when the United States bitterly complained about ElBaradei’s refusal to support U.S. claims about Iraq’s nuclear capabilities.

ElBaradei “feels very strongly about principles and about speaking his conscience, and he has been talking at all levels for the longest time” about pragmatic solution to the Iranian nuclear crisis, the diplomat said.

“It's like Iraq all over again. As their policy becomes more unsustainable and unrealistic, they lash out at the watchdog rather than bringing their policy to conform with reality,” another diplomat added.

ElBaradei issued a tough report on Iran Wednesday, highlighting numerous concerns about Iran’s nuclear transparency and confirming that Tehran has recently continued to install more enrichment centrifuges rather than heed the Security Council’s call for a suspension (see GSN, May 23).

Council powers plan to meet within days to discuss the possibility of adding additional sanctions against Iran to those already approved.

Iran has shown no signs of relenting.

“Iran's nuclear technology is being developed each day and will reach the farthest possible limit,” Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said today (Michael Adler, Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, May 25).

Despite IAEA complaints about Iran’s cooperation, ElBaradei acknowledged in his report that his inspectors have been able to review a substantial portion of Iran’s nuclear activities.

Two inspectors today visited the nation’s uranium conversion facility at Isfahan and had plans to inspect the centrifuge site at Natanz, said Mohammad Saeedi, deputy head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization (Nasser Karimi, Associated Press/CNN.com, May 25).

Meanwhile, a Russian official raised doubts that Moscow would ever complete a nuclear power reactor it has nearly finished building in Iran (see GSN, May 17).

A lingering financial dispute needed to be resolved before Russia would finish the project or provide fuel for the reactor, said a source in Russia’s nuclear power agency.

The Russian-Iranian contract called for Tehran to pay $25 million a month, but Iran has delivered only $20 million this year, the source said.

“It seems that the Iranians have lost interest in the project,” the source said.  “There are no concrete steps [in financing] on their part.”

"The project has become unprofitable for us," the source added.

Still, if Iran were to resume payments, Russia would continue the project.

“We will continue working under the contract as long as we receive financing ... and we will supply fuel six month prior to the physical launch, as stipulated in the contract,” the source said (RIA Novosti, May 25).

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