Global Security Newswire

A U.N. Security Council panel on Wednesday said it had since June probed purported breaches of international penalties targeting Iran's disputed nuclear program, the United Nations announced in a Wednesday press release (see GSN, Dec. 21).

The Security Council to date has adopted four sanctions resolutions aimed at pressuring Iran to halt nuclear activities that could support weapons development; Tehran has insisted its atomic ambitions are strictly peaceful.

One of the alleged incidents would have contravened a 2007 council resolution's prohibition on Iranian sales of weapons and associated items, said Colombian Ambassador to the United Nations Néstor Osorio, who heads the committee charged with overseeing the implementation of the sanctions.

The group launched a separate investigation of Iran's purported breach of a 2010 measure that increased weapons trade limitations on the Middle Eastern nation and bolstered rules targeting finance and delivery entities linked to "proliferation-sensitive activities."

Separately, Washington and its European allies on the Security Council reaffirmed their call for the publication of an experts panel assessment describing numerous Iranian breaches of U.N. sanctions. Russia has held up the document's release (see GSN, May 13; United Nations release, Dec. 21).

Addressing a council meeting, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice voiced alarm over Iran's plans to transfer production of 20 percent-enriched uranium to its underground Qum facility. Iran last year began generating the higher-enriched uranium, enabling the nation to potentially more quickly produce nuclear-weapon material, which must be refined to roughly 90 percent. Tehran has insisted the uranium is intended to fuel a medical isotope production reactor.

"To date, Iran has yet to provide a credible rationale for the production of near 20 percent-enriched uranium," Rice said, according to released remarks. "It has already produced sufficient fuel to power the Tehran Research Reactor for another five years, at minimum, and Iranian leaders have already described this production as 'uneconomical.'"

The launch of uranium refinement at the new site would "serve as yet another illustration of Iran’s flagrant disregard for the council’s very clear position on Iran’s enrichment activities," she said.

"No one, after reading the November [International Atomic Energy Agency report on Iran's nuclear activities], can reasonably believe Iran’s contention that its continuing uranium enrichment program is for peaceful purposes only," Rice said. The assessment expressed "serious concerns" that Iran was seeking a nuclear-weapon capability (see GSN, Nov. 9).

"The decision by the IAEA Board of Governors last month to censure Iran demonstrated yet again the overwhelming view of the international community that Iran’s illicit nuclear activities are unacceptable," the U.S. envoy added (see GSN, Nov. 18). "The council therefore must redouble its efforts to implement the sanctions already imposed. Full implementation of these measures will show Iran there is a price to be paid for its deception. Full implementation can also slow down Iran's nuclear progress, buying us more time to resolve this crisis through diplomatic means" (U.S. Mission to the United Nations release, Dec. 21).

Russia's representative at the meeting urged the Panel of Experts to avoid political bias, and China's delegate reaffirmed Beijing's call for a negotiated resolution of the nuclear standoff (United Nations release).

Iran's monetary unit on Tuesday declined to its lowest worth in U.S. dollars of any point in history, a development caused to some degree by economic penalties targeting the country, the New York Times reported (Rick Gladstone, New York Times, Dec. 21).

"All enemy's moves are focused on preventing Iran's development and progress," Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Wednesday. "They do not want to let Iran blossom and use all its possibilities," the nation's Fars News Agency quoted him as saying (Fars News Agency, Dec. 21).

Meanwhile, Iran's navy on Saturday is set to launch 10 days of practice maneuvers near the opening of the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial waterway in the transport of petroleum, the head of the military service said on Thursday in remarks reported by the Associated Press.

"There has been no decision yet" on whether the exercise would cut off traffic through the strait, the Islamic Republic News Agency quoted Rear Adm. Habibollah Sayyari as saying.

Iranian naval and Revolutionary Guard forces are able to block off the waterway, but "any decision on this will have to come from" Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, he said. Iran has provided conflicting indications on whether it might seek to block petroleum supplies through the strait in response to a potential embargo on its own oil exports, according to previous reports (Nasser Karimi, Associated Press/Google News, Dec. 22).

The United States does not have sufficient information to determine if Iran has made one of the determinations crucial to constructing a nuclear weapon, the Defense Department said on Wednesday.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta previously told CBS that Iran could assemble a quantity of nuclear bombs in 2012 if it moved to produce weapon-grade uranium and take other specific additional actions, The Hill quoted Defense Department spokesman George Little as saying.

With the "best information" now accessible to the United States, "we don't know" whether Tehran has made one such determination, Little said.

Pentagon spokesman Capt. John Kirby said it is uncertain if the United States "would have time to respond" in advance of Iran's potential completion of a bomb. Still, Washington is monitoring Iran for potential signals such as imposing a ban on IAEA safeguards officials, he said (John Bennett, The Hill, Dec. 21).

Former President Bill Clinton has urged the Obama administration to consider all possible means of addressing the nuclear dispute, Agence France-Presse reported on Wednesday.

Iranian nuclear-weapon activities "seemed to be pretty far along the road" and comprise what "was the biggest unkept secret in the world," Clinton told Fox News.

"When you ask yourself what are your options here, I do not believe the president should take any military option off the table," he said.

"But there may be more than one way to skin the cat," Clinton said, adding a 2010 computer strike targeting Iranian atomic sites had largely "gummed up their computer capacity" (see GSN, June 14).

"There may be efforts right now that we don't even know about," Clinton said.

Armed force could prove inadequate to stymie Iran's nuclear capacity, Clinton said, noting he had not reviewed classified information offered to former presidents since Secretary of State Hillary Clinton assumed her current position.

"What a lot of Americans and Israelis are worried about is if you try to bomb the facility you still got to deal with the centrifuges, they are underground in an urban area," Clinton said.

"I will tell you what bothers me, just me as a citizen, knowing what I know about this, the Iranians I think would be crazy to ever launch a nuclear weapon because their whole society would disappear," he said (Agence France-Presse I/Google News, Dec. 21).

Elsewhere, a senior Russian diplomat on Wednesday played down the value of economic pressure in the nuclear dispute with Iran, ITAR-Tass reported.

Moscow and Washington are "increasingly concerned over the Iranian nuclear program as there is no confidence that there is nothing in it to hide and there is no possibility to close the questions that have long been featuring in this case and have not been solved," Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said in a radio interview.

Russia wants Tehran and the U.N. nuclear watchdog to "pool efforts and do more in order to get rid of all these questions through dialogue and cooperation," Ryabkov said.

"The nuclear nonproliferation regime would have been seriously undermined by evidence that Iran is implementing a military nuclear program. In Russia's opinion, there is no such evidence for the time being," the official added.

The United States believes that "trust in the Iranian nuclear program can be restored by further endless escalation of sanctions against Iran in order to eventually make it change its policy and force Tehran to make concessions," the diplomat said.

"We believe that this leads nowhere. Tehran will never give in to pressure. Sanctions are fraught with destabilization, which is very risky, and maximum effort has to be exerted in order to come to agreement," Ryabkov said. For that reason, Moscow "objects to sanctions and thinks that this approach has exhausted itself, insists on further talks and is making new proposals," he said (ITAR-Tass, Dec. 21).

Responding to a statement this week by the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast on Thursday "utterly rejected" any questions over his nation's "peaceful nuclear activities, since they are being conducted within the U.N. atomic watchdog's framework," AFP reported.

The Gulf Cooperation Council on Tuesday urged Tehran to "fully cooperate" with the International Atomic Energy Agency and to address disagreements with neighboring states  "peacefully" (Agence France-Presse II/Daily Star, Dec. 22).