Iran defies US over weapons hunt

Technical experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency, who flew to Tehran yesterday, have one month to investigate Iran’s nuclear programmes, which are widely suspected of shielding the development of nuclear weapons.

If they are not satisfied, the IAEA will report to the UN Security Council, which will then be asked by the US to impose punitive sanctions against Iran.

Military action by the administration of President George Bush could eventually follow. The CIA has already briefed friendly foreign intelligence services on a contingency plan for air and missile strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites, according to western diplomats.

Under pressure from Washington the IAEA has set an October 31 deadline for Iran to provide full disclosure of its nuclear programme to demonstrate it is not covertly making nuclear weapons, as the United States alleges.

Iran must also suspend all uranium enrichment, and agree to accept snap inspections even of locations that are not declared as nuclear sites.

Last week, IAEA director-general Dr Mohammed El-Baradei, said that the coming weeks will be "decisive" and that the deadline was "non-negotiable". He called on Iran to provide "full transparency and full disclosure".

But Iran remains defiant. "For the time being we will continue enriching uranium," Iran’s ambassador to the IAEA, Ali Akbar Salehi, said in Tehran. Enriched uranium can be used to fuel power plants or to make weapons if highly enriched.

Tehran insists that its nuclear programme is strictly for generating electricity. But it also says it will allow the inspectors access only to declared nuclear sites and ban them from military establishments.

"At the moment it looks like they’re on a collision course with the Security Council," said a European diplomat in Tehran. "I can’t see them pulling a surprise and meeting our demands before the deadline."

Traces of weapons-grade uranium have been discovered at two Iranian facilities in the past few months. Salehi claimed that they had arrived in contaminated equipment bought abroad.

Since then IAEA inspectors have been granted entry to some sites only after they have been thoroughly cleaned of potentially incriminating evidence.

Tensions with Washington have been inflamed further by a report for the Pentagon which concludes that the Islamic Republic is now two years away from producing its first nuclear weapon, and which argues that its nuclear facilities should be "covertly" attacked if it fails to cooperate.

In the report Henry Sokolski, a former deputy assistant secretary of defence in the first Bush administration, argues that Iran should scrap its entire nuclear programme, including a reactor under construction by the Russians at the southern port of Bushehr, which Iraq says is for electricity.

"The Iranians have a bomb-making option as long as they have a reactor," said Sokolski, executive director of the Non-proliferation Policy Education Centre in Washington. "You are whistling past the graveyard of political and technical reality if you leave any fissile production capability in that country."

Sokolski, who is close to Bush administration conservatives, including John Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, said "covert" operations should be considered against Iran’s facilities. Overt military strikes would be "self-defeating".

But if Iran, which Bush has branded part of an "axis of evil" with North Korea and pre-war Iraq, cooperated, and also ended its support for terrorist groups, it should be offered "security guarantees, economic assistance and normalised diplomatic relations," he said.

Iran is considered unlikely to give up the Bushehr project, which has already cost the country nearly $1bn and has become a matter of national pride.

But there have been mixed signals resulting from tensions between the elected leaders and leading clergy, experts say. Reformist President Mohammed Khatami said that Iran would continue to cooperate with the IAEA.

While insisting that Iran would "vigorously pursue its peaceful nuclear programme", foreign minister Kamal Kharrazi added: "We don’t have anything to hide because we do not have a programme for producing nuclear weapons. We are ready to be quite transparent."

Kharrazi said that the US campaign was causing tensions within the Iranian government, with Khatami being "in the middle of two sides of pressure".

Stephen Kinzer, author of All The Shah’s Men, said: "Iran is unique in that it has two functioning governments. There is a functioning democracy with an elected president and a parliament. Next to them is a repressive theocracy. They have been fighting ever since the Islamic revolution of 1979.

"The danger is that if the US seems like it’s intervening in Iran it will unite a lot of people behind the repressive theocracy, which is anti-American and anti-Western. Iran does not have nuclear weapons yet. But I think it’s a real danger the world has to worry about, because the regime has shown that it can’t be trusted."

COUNTDOWN TO STANDOFF

January 1995 Iran signed a contract for Russia to provide a light water reactor at Bushehr. Spent fuel rods were to be shipped back to Russia to extract plutonium which could be used in weapons production.

October 1997 The government of newly-elected President Mohammed Khatami (right) announced that it planned to meet 20% of its electricity demand through nuclear power, and would build a second power unit at Bushehr.

December 2002 The National Council of Resistance, an Iranian opposition group, revealed that Tehran was developing a secret heavy-water production plant in Arak, west central Iran, and a uranium-enrichment facility at Natanz, a fuel-making facility 150 miles south of Tehran.

June 2003 The IAEA board was shown evidence that Iran had secretly imported 1,800 kilograms of uranium from China, and planned to build a plutonium-production reactor.

August 2003 Inspectors found traces of enriched uranium at Natanz.

September 12, 2003 The IAEA gave Iran until 31 October to prove it did not have a hidden nuclear weapons programme.

Late September 2003 IAEA inspectors found traces of highly enriched uranium at the Kalaye Electrical Company site in Tehran.

November 2003 If the IAEA board rules that Tehran has violated the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, the Security Council could impose economic or diplomatic sanctions.