TEHRAN, 20 September 2004 — Iran rejected yesterday a UN resolution calling on it to freeze uranium enrichment activities and threatened to stop snap checks of its atomic facilities if its case were sent to the UN Security Council.
It said that if the Security Council went as far as punishing Tehran with sanctions, Iran might follow North Korea and pull out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty altogether.
Washington says Iran plans to use enriched uranium to make nuclear weapons, but Tehran says its nuclear program is dedicated solely to generating electricity.
The UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN nuclear watchdog, unanimously adopted a resolution on Saturday calling on Iran to suspend all uranium enrichment-related activities.
“Iran will not accept any obligation regarding the suspension of uranium enrichment,” chief nuclear negotiator Hassan Rohani told a news conference yesterday. “No international body can force Iran to do so.”
His words chimed with the view of the Iranian Parliament, which urged the government to ignore the resolution.
Although the IAEA board termed the suspension a “necessary” confidence-building measure, it observed that suspensions would be “voluntary decisions” by Iran and not obligations, enabling Tehran to tell Iranians it was not acting under UN pressure.
Abdul Samad Minty, head of South Africa’s Council for the Non-Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction, told Reuters Iran was under no legal obligation to halt its enrichment plans and any decision to do so would come from Tehran’s desire to create good will among skeptics and critics.
“If Iran decides at some point they do not want to suspend their program any more, they have that right,” he said. South Africa, a former nuclear power, also has an enrichment program. Enriched to a low level, uranium can be used to fuel nuclear power stations like the one Iran is building at Bushehr on its south coast. Highly enriched, it can be used in bombs.
Iran agreed to suspend uranium enrichment-related activities last year after talks in Tehran with foreign ministers from France, Britain and Germany, the so-called EU big three.
But in July Iran said it had restarted building centrifuges and had recommenced work at a plant that produces uranium hexafluoride, the feed material for centrifuges. Centrifuges enrich uranium by spinning it at supersonic speeds.
Rohani predicted a rough ride in the run-up to the next IAEA board of governors meeting on Nov. 25.
“This is a war, we may win or we may lose,” said the mid-ranking cleric, who is secretary-general of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council.
“Iran has never accepted suspension through a resolution, but through political talks,” Rohani said.
He said Iran would stop allowing UN inspectors to make short-notice visits to its atomic facilities if its dossier were sent to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions.
“If they want to send Iran to the Security Council, it is not wise, and we will stop implementing the Additional Protocol,” he said.
The Additional Protocol to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) allows UN inspectors to make snap checks of nuclear facilities. Iran is implementing its terms, though Parliament has not ratified it.
Rohani also said Iran could pull out of the NPT if the Security Council took extreme measures against it. “If they impose economic sanctions, Parliament may ask the government to pull out of the NPT,” he said.
