DEBKAfile – Iran threatens to end cooperation with the IAEA, quit NPT.

Iran threatens to end cooperation with the IAEA, quit NPT

DEBKAfile Special Report

November 27, 2009, 1:10 PM (GMT+02:00)

IAEA chief admits failure

Tehran may well break off cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency-IAEA and withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty after the IAEA’s 35-nation board of governors Friday, Nov. 27 approved a resolution voicing serious concern about its failure to comply with international obligations and referring the issue to the UN Security Council. It also calls on Iran to halt the construction of its second enrichment site at Fordo near Qom and declare its other covert nuclear sites. All five UN Security Council permanent members supported the censure, Iran’s first in four years.

Capping his 12-year tenure, the retiring IAEA director Mohamed ElBaradei was forced to admit Thursday, Nov. 26 that his efforts to work with Iran had reached “a dead end.” He told the agency’s board of governors: “There has been no movement on remaining issues of concern which need to be clarified for the agency to verify the exclusively peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program.”

Therefore, DEBKAfile‘s sources report, by entering into negotiations with the big powers this summer – which led nowhere, then signaling its acceptance in principle of his proposal to send 70 pc of its enriched uranium overseas to be reprocessed for medical research – then backing off, Iran gained most of 2009 for developing its nuclear weapon program in peace and quiet.

Tehran will most likely make its response typically ambivalent. But by quitting the NPT, Iran would free itself of international obligations with regard to its nuclear activities. Our sources note that this will not change much. Anyway, while holding talks on its program with six world powers and throwing an occasional bone to IAEA inspectors, Tehran does as it pleases and conceals most of its nuclear activities heedless of world censure.

In his parting words to the IAEA governors, ElBaradei said that in his view, “the proposed agreement (for overseas enrichment) presented a unique opportunity after many years of animosity and hostility to… create a space for negotiation. This opportunity should be seized,” he said in a last appeal to Tehran, “and it would be highly regrettable if it was missed.”

This was his final admission that the agency had failed in all its efforts to open up the Iranian program to controls and inspection, just as it failed to prevent North Korea from building its nuclear arsenal. Nonetheless, the United States and most other world powers connived with Dr. ElBaradei to blind the world to the true state of Iran’s rogue program. They even gave up clamoring for a halt in uranium enrichment as a precondition for negotiations.

For weeks now, they played along with director’s obfuscation tactics and insisted Iran had accepted the enrichment proposal, the sole outcome of the latest rounds of talks with Iran in Geneva and Vienna – even after Tehran deliberately missed the Oct. 23 deadline for its acceptance.

The IAEA director’s “dead end” statement applies equally to the six powers’ bid to engage Iran in negotiations on its nuclear program and the wholesale concealment of its activities. Israeli leaders, including president Shimon Peres, prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, defense minister Ehud Barak, presented an equally false face when they reiterated that Iran’s nuclear aspirations are the business of the international community rather than Israel. They knew all the time that world powers were spending more time fabricating a false picture of Iran’s nuclear attainments the facts than dealing with them. The IAEA director has finally come clean for them all.

Iran Censured at U.N. Nuclear Meeting – CBS News.

25 Nations Back Resolution that Demands Tehran Immediately Mothball Newly Revealed Nuke Facility

(CBS/AP)

The U.N. nuclear agency’s board censured Iran on Friday, with 25 nations backing a resolution that demands Tehran immediately mothball its newly revealed nuclear facility and heed U.N. Security Council resolutions calling on it to stop uranium enrichment.

Iran remained defiant, with its chief representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency declaring that his country would resist “pressure, resolutions, sanction(s) and threat of military attack.”

The resolution — and the resulting vote of the IAEA’s 35-nation decision-making board — were significant on several counts.

The resolution was endorsed by six world powers — the U.S., Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany — reflecting a rare measure of unity on Iran. Moscow and Beijing have acted as a traditional drag on efforts to punish Iran for its nuclear defiance, either preventing new Security Council sanctions or watering down their potency.

They did not formally endorse the last IAEA resolution in 2006, which referred Iran to the Security Council, starting the process that has resulted in three sets of sanctions on the Islamic Republic. Their backing for the document at the Vienna meeting thus reflected broad international disenchantment with Tehran.

It also appeared to signal possible support for any new Western push for a fourth set of U.N sanctions, should Tehran continue shunning international overtures meant to reach agreements that reduce concerns about its nuclear ambitions.

Strong backing for the resolution at the meeting was also notable. Only three nations — Cuba, Venezuela and Malaysia — voted against the document, with five abstentions and one member absent.

That meant even most nonaligned IAEA board members abandoned Tehran, despite their traditional backing of the Islamic Republic.

The diplomats who reported the vote spoke on condition of anonymity Friday because of the sensitivity of the situation.

Iran argues that attacks on its nuclear program are an assault on the rights of developing nations to create their own peaceful nuclear energy network. The United States and other nations believe Iran’s nuclear program has the goal of creating nuclear weapons.

The IAEA resolution criticized Iran for defying a U.N. Security Council ban on uranium enrichment — the source of both nuclear fuel and the fissile core of warheads.

It also censured Iran for secretly building a uranium enrichment facility and demanded that it immediately suspend further construction. It noted that IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei cannot confirm that Tehran’s nuclear program is exclusively geared toward peaceful uses, and expressed “serious concern” that Iranian stonewalling of an IAEA probe means “the possibility of military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear program” cannot be excluded.

Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran’s chief delegate to the IAEA, shrugged off the vote.

“Neither resolutions of the board of governors nor those of the United Nations Security Council … neither sanctions nor the treat of military attacks, can interrupt peaceful nuclear activities in Iran, even a second,” he told the closed meeting, in remarks made available to reporters.

Iran on Sunday began large-scale air defense war games aimed at protecting its nuclear facilities from attack, state TV reported, as an air force commander boasted the country could deter any military strike by Israel.

CBS News Foreign Affairs Analyst Pamela Falk, who is based at the United Nations, said the war games are intended to show the United States and Israel that it would protect its nuclear facilities against a preemptive attack.