VIENNA, 26 September 2005 — The UN atomic watchdog’s new hard line toward Iran could lead to either escalation or negotiation in the showdown over Iranian nuclear activities which the United States claims hide weapons work.
Iran yesterday blasted as “illegal” a resolution adopted in Vienna by the watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that sets the country up for referral to the UN Security Council. The council could impose penalties including international trade sanctions.
But Iran’s Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki also said he “does not see the path of negotiations closed.”
The resolution drafted by EU negotiators Britain, Germany and France states for the first time since the IAEA began investigating Iran in February 2003 that the Islamic Republic is in “noncompliance” with the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
This is mainly for hiding sensitive atomic activities for almost two decades and for still failing to answer some of the agency’s questions.
A finding of noncompliance is an automatic trigger for taking the matter to the Security Council.
But such a referral would come only after a report on Iran by IAEA chief Mohammed El-Baradei, which he plans on making to an IAEA meeting in November.
El-Baradei said after the resolution was adopted Saturday by the IAEA’s board of governors that there is still room for diplomacy.
Before the resolution was passed, Iran had threatened to respond by resuming making enriched uranium — nuclear reactor fuel that can also be bomb material — and cease applying a protocol that allows the IAEA to carry out more intrusive inspections of atomic facilities.
Nonproliferation expert Joe Cirincione told AFP from Washington that a move to enrich uranium would be dangerous, as this is a “red line” for the United States, the EU and Israel.
“Then it’s off to the races since the escalation would spiral out of control,” Cirincione said.
Iran’s resumption in August of uranium conversion, a first step in making enriched uranium, had scuttled talks with the European negotiating trio on guaranteeing Iran’s nuclear program is peaceful.
The resolution said Iran could avoid penalties by halting conversion, giving IAEA inspectors full cooperation and returning to the EU talks.
“In the coming days Iran will spell out its position and actions regarding the resolution,” Mottaki said, promising to “use all diplomatic means to get to our rights.”
Another Washington-based analyst, former UN weapons inspector David Albright, said Iran had not left the West any choice in moving toward a hard line, after the toughening of its stance when new President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took office in August.
Ahmadinejad shocked the West with a speech to the UN General Assembly in New York in September in which he uncompromisingly asserted Iran’s “inalienable right” to nuclear fuel work under the NPT.
Halting such work was a precondition to the talks with the EU, talks which had led to the IAEA holding off since October 2003 on citing Iran for noncompliance with the NPT.
Albright described Ahmadinejad’s speech as “sticking his tongue out at the world in essence.”
Gregory Schulte, US ambassador to the IAEA, had Saturday “called upon Iran to cease the activities that give us such concern, to come clear with the IAEA and return to the negotiating table.”
The voting at the IAEA’s 35-nation board seemed to show Iran failing to win widespread backing for its case even though the resolution fell short of consensus, the usual IAEA means of decision.
It was adopted by 22-1, with 12 abstentions.
But only Venezuela, which has its own problems with Washington, voted against, while Russia, China, Pakistan, Brazil and South Africa abstained, something EU diplomats hailed as a victory since these states had lobbied strongly against the resolution but did not vote “no.”
Meanwhile, India, a member of the non-aligned bloc which was vehemently against the resolution, in the end voted for it, as did Japan, South Korea, and Singapore, all countries with which oil-giant Iran would want to do business if it turns away from the West.
