Iran Warns Watchdog It May Bar Inspections

Raising the stakes before a key vote by the U.N. nuclear agency, Iranian lawmakers approved a bill Sunday requiring the government to block inspections of atomic facilities if the agency refers Iran to the Security Council for possible sanctions.

The bill was favored by 183 of the 197 parliament members present. The session was broadcast live on state-run radio four days before the International Atomic Energy Agency board was scheduled to consider referring Tehran to the United Nations Security Council for violating a nuclear arms control treaty. The Security Council could impose sanctions.

If the bill becomes law, as expected, it probably will strengthen the government’s hand in resisting international pressure to permanently abandon uranium enrichment, a process that can produce fuel for either nuclear reactors or atomic bombs.

The United States accuses Iran of trying to build a nuclear weapon. Iran says its program is for generating electricity.

The bill now will go to Iran’s Guardian Council, a hard-line constitutional watchdog, for ratification. The council is expected to approve the measure.

Canceling voluntary measures means Iran would stop allowing in-depth IAEA inspections of its nuclear facilities and would resume enriching uranium. The Islamic Republic has been allowing short-notice inspections of those sites.

Iran resumed uranium reprocessing activities -- a step before enrichment -- at its Esfahan uranium conversion facility in August.

The United States and Europe want Iran to permanently halt uranium enrichment.

But Iran says the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty allows it to pursue a nuclear program for peaceful purposes, and it will never give up the right to enrich uranium.

“Through this bill, we are declaring to Europe that referring Iran to the U.N. Security Council means Europeans are pushing the region toward a crisis,” lawmaker Kazem Jalali told the chamber before the vote.

The 35-member IAEA board of governors meets Thursday in Vienna.

In a preparatory report, the agency found that Iran had received detailed nuclear designs from a black-market network run by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan’s atomic program. Diplomats say those designs appear to be blueprints for the core of a nuclear warhead.

On Sunday, Iran sought to blunt potential international action over its nuclear program, labeling the report about blueprints “baseless.”