VIENNA, Feb 26, (Agencies): The UN nuclear monitoring agency says “recently received” information is adding to concerns Iran may have worked on developing nuclear arms.
At the same time, a report by the organization — The International Atomic Energy Agency — noted that Tehran continues to stonewall its attempts to follow up on that information, which points to possible experiments with components of a nuclear arms program.
The report also said conversion work of uranium ore to the gas from which enriched uranium is made remained idle for the 18th month, indicating a possible shortage of the raw material on which Tehran’s nuclear program is built on.
A new intelligence report from an IAEA member country shared with The Associated Press says Iran is expanding its covert global search for raw uranium. It divulged a secret visit by Iranian Foreign Minister Akbar Salehi last month to uranium-rich Zimbabwe in search for the metal.
Iran denies any shortage, but the intelligence assessment is line with international assessments that Iran’s domestic supplies cannot indefinitely sustain an expanding nuclear program.
An annex to Friday’s confidential IAEA report listed “the outstanding issues which give rise to concern about possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear programme.” It included design work on a nuclear payload; experiments with explosives that could detonate such a payload and other work that could be linked to making weapons.
The list contained no new information, with much of its contents based on material that first surfaced seven years ago on a laptop United States intelligence agencies say was spirited out of Iran by a defector. A senior international diplomat familiar with the report said it was annexed to summarize suspicions for the 35-IAEA board member nations the report was meant for.
Iran on Saturday rejected concerns expressed in a new report by the UN watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, raising concerns about a possible military dimension to its nuclear programme.
“The important point is that the full detailed report regarding all our nuclear activities show full supervision by the IAEA and no deviation to prohibited ends,” the state news agency IRNA quoted Iran’s envoy to the agency, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, as saying. “For the 26th time, the IAEA confirmed the peaceful nature of our nuclear programme,” Soltanieh insisted.
In a restricted report, the watchdog said on Friday that Iran was still refusing “to discuss a number of outstanding issues related to possible military dimensions to its nuclear work.”
Tehran insists its programme is entirely peaceful.
But Western governments suspect it is cover for a weapons drive and have compiled evidence that it was involved in weaponisation studies — work which included uranium conversion, high explosives testing and the adaptation of a ballistic missile cone to carry a nuclear warhead — at least until 2003.
Iran has dismissed the evidence as “fabricated” and refused to discuss the “alleged studies” any further.
Nevertheless, “additional information ... has come to the (agency’s) attention since August 2008, including new information recently received” that prompted “further concerns,” the IAEA report said.
“Iran is not engaging with the agency in substance on issues concerning the allegation that Iran is developing a nuclear payload for its missile programme,” the report said.
Iran is under four sets of UN sanctions for pursuing its controversial uranium enrichment programme despite repeated Security Council ultimatums to freeze it.
Soltanieh also took the opportunity to dismiss the UN resolutions against Iran, saying they “have no legal basis and so cannot be implemented.”