WarSclerotic

VIENNA – Diplomats accredited to the UN nuclear watchdog said on Friday they had no information to substantiate word from a senior Iranian parliamentarian that Tehran has halted its most sensitive atomic activity.

Iran’s enrichment of uranium to a fissile level of 20 percent is a major technical step taking it just short of the concentration needed for a nuclear weapon. Iran says it needs the material only to fuel a medical research reactor.

An envoy in Vienna, where the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is based, said he believed Iran was continuing to refine uranium to the 20 percent threshold despite the Iranian lawmaker’s comment.

The IAEA, which regularly inspects Iranian nuclear sites, has declined to comment on the issue. But several diplomats from member states said they were not aware of any such move by Iran.

They cautioned, however, that IAEA inspectors are believed to go to Iran’s uranium enrichment plants about once a week so it is possible the agency may not yet know of any halt if it only happened in the past few days. The next quarterly IAEA report on Iran will be issued in November.

World powers seeking a diplomatic solution to the nuclear dispute with Iran want it to stop the activity. Iran indicated in talks with the powers that resumed in Geneva last week that it might scale back its program to win sanctions relief.

But any move to shelve its higher-grade enrichment already would be surprising, as Western experts believe Iran would want to brandish it as a bargaining chip in the negotiations, which are due to resume in the same Swiss city on Nov. 7-8.

Hossein Naqavi Hosseini, a senior member of Iran’s parliamentary national security commission, said Iran had stopped refining uranium above the 5 percent required for civilian power stations as it already had all the 20 percent enriched fuel it needs for the research reactor in Tehran.

“The issue of suspension or halt of enrichment activities is meaningless because no production is taking place at the moment,” parliament’s website quoted him as saying on Tuesday.

INTERNATIONAL SCRUTINY

There has so far been no other comment on the matter in the Islamic Republic, where it was a public holiday on Thursday ahead of Friday’s normal weekend.

Iranian MPs have in the past made statements about the nuclear program that the government later denied.

Iran’s production and stockpile of 20-percent uranium is closely watched in the West and Israel.

The Jewish state, believed to be the only nuclear-armed power in the Middle East, has suggested it could attack Iran if it acquired enough of the material for one nuclear bomb, but Iran has kept its 20-percent stockpile below that threshold.

Tehran denies allegations by Western powers that it is seeking the capability to produce nuclear arms.

While members of parliament’s national security commission are regularly briefed on the nuclear program, they are not directly involved in policy-making. The big decisions are made by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Western officials have said Iran must stop enriching uranium to 20 percent, increase the transparency of its nuclear program, reduce its uranium stocks and take other steps to reassure the world that it is not after nuclear weapons.

Iran and six world powers – the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, plus Germany – said that last week’s talks in Geneva were positive and constructive.

The meeting was the first since moderate Iranian President Hassan Rouhani came to office in August promising to try to resolve the nuclear dispute and secure an easing of sanctions that have severely damaged Iran’s oil-dependent economy.

WASHINGTON – Strategic Affairs and Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz told his American counterparts in the Israel-US strategic dialogue that Israel’s “minimum” in any deal with Iran was no uranium enrichment.

Steinitz described his meeting Wednesday with a US team led by William Burns, the deputy secretary of state, as long and productive. Such meetings take place about twice a year.

Steinitz, speaking Thursday to Israeli journalists, said his message to the Americans was that the Iranians must be stripped of any enrichment capacity, describing that as “the minimal agreement for Israel to live with it in peace.”

Israeli officials have not said what the country would do should the United States and Iran strike a deal short of Israel’s demands, but Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has not ruled out a military strike to keep Iran from achieving a nuclear weapons capacity.

The United States led major powers in renewing talks with Iran this month aimed at making more transparent that country’s nuclear program.

The talks were launched after the election this summer of Hassan Rouhani, a relative moderate who campaigned on outreach to the West, partly as a means of relieving crippling sanctions.

Rouhani says he is ready to make more transparent a nuclear program he insists is for peaceful purposes, but he has ruled out any permanent end to enrichment.

The Obama administration has not publicly said whether it would accept continued enrichment, but reports have said that Western diplomats may accept uranium enrichment at 3.5-5 percent, well short of the 90 percent needed for weaponization.

Steinitz said that Iran’s nuclear infrastructure is such that even at 3.5 percent enrichment, it could break out to weaponization within months and would be able in its first year to manufacture 5-7 bombs.

Steinitz, who also met with lawmakers in Congress and Vice President Joe Biden during his stay, said he backed intensifying sanctions as a means of increasing leverage. Some leading congressional lawmakers back such an intensification; the Obama administration says that such a step now could scuttle the renewed talks.

The next round of talks between the major powers and Iran is set for next month.