U.N. Nuclear Agency Takes Step Toward Sanctions on Iran

The U.N. nuclear watchdog agency said Friday that Iran had continued to defy Security Council demands that it freeze its efforts to enrich uranium, setting up a showdown between the international community and the Islamic Republic.

The council is scheduled to meet Wednesday to begin consideration of a resolution legally requiring Iran to halt the enrichment, which can produce bomb-grade uranium or fuel for power plants, and to address longunanswered questions about the possible military applications of its nuclear program. The measure would be the next step in a diplomatic path leading to possible sanctions against Iran or its leaders.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told a rally in the country’s northwest on Friday that Iran had the right to pursue nuclear technology and that its leaders “do not give a damn” about possible U.N. resolutions.

“Enemies think that by ... threatening us, launching psychological warfare or ... imposing embargos they can dissuade our nation from obtaining nuclear technology,” Ahmadinejad told cheering supporters in a speech shown on Iranian television. “The Iranian nation insists on its right to peaceful nuclear technology. We will not back down one iota.”

Ahmadinejad’s statements are the latest in a series of challenges from the Islamic Republic, which ended a moratorium on processing nuclear material this year after talks with Britain, France and Germany collapsed.

Iran says it has the legal right to develop nuclear know-how under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Its intransigence has made other countries, especially the U.S., suspicious that Iran’s history of covert nuclear development and refusal to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, means it is pursuing nuclear weapons.

The IAEA report Friday does not suggest Iran is trying to develop nuclear arms, but it says Iran’s lack of cooperation has made it increasingly difficult for inspectors to assess whether the country has a covert military program.

The report says that during a 30-day grace period after the Security Council asked Iran to suspend enrichment, the country forged ahead with building a cascade of 164 centrifuges and successfully enriched the element to 3.6%, the level needed for nuclear power generation but far lower than the 80% to 90% needed for bomb-grade fuel.

The IAEA confirmed Iran’s claim that it was in the process of building two more cascades of 164 centrifuges, which would expand its enrichment capability and demonstrate that it was on its way to mastering a key component of the enrichment process. However, nuclear experts say Iran is still years away from producing enough highly enriched uranium to produce a weapon.

The eight-page report also says that Iran failed to address questions about the history and scope of its centrifuge program or to clarify recent claims by Ahmadinejad that Iran was conducting research on P-2 centrifuges, a type that enriches uranium four times faster than the P-1 version it is now using.

Iran also refused to provide documents from a nuclear black-market network run by disgraced Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan dealing with centrifuges and how to build a nuclear weapon core. Nor did it answer questions about experiments involving small amounts of plutonium.

The report concludes that because of those gaps, “including the role of the military in Iran’s nuclear program, the agency is unable to make progress in its efforts to provide assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran.”

Iran sent a letter to the IAEA staff on Thursday, the eve of the report’s publication, saying it would deliver a timetable to answer questions within three weeks. But the letter also contains a veiled threat, saying Tehran would continue to cooperate with the agency’s regular inspections only if the issue did not go to the Security Council.

The agency responded sharply, saying it would not accept conditions placed on its systematic checks of nuclear power plants and material under IAEA safeguards. “The safeguards verifications should not be held hostage to political issues,” an official close to the agency said.

The U.S. is leading a push at the Security Council to pass a resolution legally obligating Iran to halt all nuclear research and development, a move Russia and China have resisted. Those two nations, which are among the five permanent members of the council, might allow the resolution to pass if they are persuaded it won’t by itself open the door to sanctions or military action.

“We would give Iran a short time to come into compliance,” U.S. Ambassador John R. Bolton said. “Then, if Iran doesn’t come into compliance, we would consider what the next steps would be ... likely targeted sanctions.”

Sanctions would probably target Iranian officials, not the people or the oil industry, and could include freezing assets and banning overseas travel.

President Bush told reporters shortly after the release of the IAEA report that the world was ready to ratchet up pressure on Iran.

“It’s very important for the Iranians to understand there is a common desire by a lot of nations in this world to convince them, peacefully convince them, that they ought to give up their weapons ambitions,” Bush said.

After recently refusing to rule out a military strike against Iran, and reports that the White House was studying the use of nuclear “bunker buster” bombs against Iranian nuclear facilities, Bush emphasized that diplomacy was his preferred path.

“Diplomatic options are just beginning,” he said later. “We’re working on the tactics. And today’s IAEA report should remind us all that the Iranian government’s intransigence is not acceptable.”

But the process of winning full council support for sanctions -- if that is even possible -- will be lengthy, leading the United States to look beyond the U.N.

“We’re talking to many countries about using their leverage with Iran,” said Robert Joseph, the U.S. undersecretary of State for arms control and international security. “We’re talking to the Russians about their support and assistance to [the] Bushehr [nuclear power plant], about not going forward with their air defense sales, and basic defensive measures we could take together.”

Joseph said that in a recent tour of Persian Gulf states, he talked to leaders about refusing to sell conventional arms or dual-use materials to Iran.

Though there is no definitive plan yet, he said, it is clear that Russia and other countries are “very frustrated” with Iran. “We don’t differ on the ends, we differ on the means,” Joseph said.

Wang Guangya, the Chinese ambassador to the U.N., emphasized Friday that China did not see sanctions as an effective tool and that there was plenty of time to negotiate.

“All we want is to work for a diplomatic solution,” Wang said. “There are a lot of problems in the region, and we should not do anything that would cause the situation to become even more complicated.”

Russia also opposes sanctions, but it has been sending signals that it would not exclude them. Konstantin Kosachyov, chairman of the Russian parliament’s international affairs committee, told Interfax news agency, “If Iran continues to ignore the international community’s position, I do not rule out that at some more distant stage -- I’d like to emphasize it -- the matter could involve the imposition of economic sanctions on Iran.”

The United States already has broad sanctions on Iran, so new measures would have to come from Tehran’s largest trade partners, which include Japan and European countries.

Japanese Ambassador Kenzo Oshima said the U.S. had not approached his country about the possibility.

In the European Union, France and Italy are reluctant to sacrifice trade, but France, as one of the key countries that has negotiated with Iran, is under heavy pressure.

“We’ll try to work with the Security Council first,” a French diplomat said. “If we don’t have anything in the council, we might very well go for independent sanctions next.”

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Times staff writer Kim Murphy in Moscow contributed to this report.