Iran defies U.N. council deadline on enrichment

Tuesday meeting in Berlin
An official from one nation on the council said the meeting was tentatively set for Tuesday in Berlin. The official said senior officials from the U.S., Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany would meet in the German capital the following day. Those six nations offered rewards to Iran in June if it gave up enrichment — but warned of U.N. sanctions if it didn’t.

Bolton told AP that while Washington “has extensive thoughts on what a possible U.N. resolution would look like, such discussion will await the outcome of the Solana meeting with Iran.”

Still, he said the IAEA report added further weight to suspicions Iran is “engaged in activities that are only consistent with a weapons program.”

Bolton declined to specify what sanctions the U.S. might seek. But U.S. and European diplomats have said they are focusing on low-level punishment at first to win backing from Russia and China. Proposals include travel bans on Iranian officials or a ban on the sale of dual-use technology to Iran.

Russia, China likely to resist
More extreme sanctions would be a freeze on Iranian assets or a broader trade ban, but those would likely be opposed by Russia, China and perhaps others, particularly since it could cut off badly needed oil exports from Iran.

In Tehran, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi shrugged off the possibility of sanctions, telling state-run television that Iran “will find a way to avoid pressure eventually.”

Ahmadinejad denounced the United States, accusing it of trying to impose its will on Iran.

“They claim to be supporting freedom but they support the most tyrannical governments in the world to pursue their own interests,” he told a crowd of thousands in the northwestern town of Orumiyeh.

“The Iranian nation will not succumb to bullying, invasion and the violation of its rights,” Ahmadinejad said.

While stating “Iran has not suspended its enrichment activities,” the restricted IAEA report, obtained by AP, did not specifically say Iran was carrying out enrichment Thursday. It said only that Tehran started work on a new batch Aug. 24.

But a senior official close to the agency said Iran’s pilot centrifuge plant was processing small quantities of uranium gas for enrichment as late as Tuesday, the last day IAEA inspectors reported back to headquarters on Tehran’s nuclear program.

Suspicion mounts
Iran says it wants to develop a full-scale enrichment program to produce reactor fuel, but there is growing suspicion the oil-rich country wants to use enrichment to create fissile material for nuclear warheads.

The rest of the IAEA’s report essentially documented a protracted stalemate between agency inspectors trying to determine if Tehran is seeking to make weapons and Iranian officials who have repeatedly refused to provide information.

While the findings on enrichment were expected, they were important because they provided the formal trigger needed for the Security Council to take up sanctions.

IAEA officials said the six-page report was hand-carried to the council chambers at the same time it was posted on the agency’s intranet site for the 35 nations on the IAEA’s board of governors.

Other findings
Other key findings in the report from IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei:

• New findings of minute particles of highly enriched uranium at an Iranian technical university implicated in possible military work, although the report did not specify whether the level was weapons-grade.
• A decision by the Iranians to cut off IAEA access to suspicious diagrams apparently showing how to mold fissile material into the shape of a warhead and to destroy notes taken on the document by agency inspectors.
• The temporary barring of U.N. inspectors from an underground facility being built to house tens of thousands of centrifuges, the backbone of Iran’s future enrichment program.
• Protracted delays in granting multiple entry visas to IAEA inspectors.

U.N. officials told AP that even Olli Heinonen, deputy IAEA director-general in charge of the Iran investigation, was left dangling. In an unprecedented move, Iranian officials initially issued him only a one-month visa before relenting and giving him the usual one-year entry pass Wednesday, a day before the report was released.

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