VIENNA: Iran’s defiant expansion of its nuclear programme and 10 failed meetings with the IAEA will dominate a gathering of the UN body’s board starting tomorrow, diplomats said.
The 35 nations that make up the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency’s rotating board of governors were expected to refrain however from passing a resolution condemning the Islamic republic.
The IAEA’s latest quarterly report, circulated on May 22, showed that despite numerous IAEA board and UN Security Council resolutions calling for a suspension, Tehran has continued to expand its nuclear activities.
In particular, and in spite of sanctions aimed at preventing such advances, it has boosted its capacity to enrich uranium, which in its highly purified form can be used in a nuclear weapon. Iran says it needs the material for power generation and medical isotopes.
Iran has also converted a portion of its medium-enriched uranium into another form in order to make reactor fuel, the IAEA report showed, which is difficult — but not impossible — to convert back.
But analysts say the rate of conversion is too low to prevent Iran’s uranium stockpile from growing, that its output could triple once new machinery is up an running and that Tehran is producing more than it currently needs.
This conversion of 20-percent enriched uranium “is a ray of light but there are still some pretty dark clouds around,” Shannon Kile, nuclear expert at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), said. One such source of additional worry is Iran’s progress, also outlined in the latest IAEA report, in building a new reactor at Arak which could in theory provide Iran with plutonium, if the fuel is further processed.
Plutonium is an alternative to highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon. North Korea used plutonium in two tests in 2006 and 2009, while a uranium bomb was dropped by the US on Hiroshima, Japan in 1945.
Arak “shows that this issue is not just about 20-percent enriched uranium stockpiles. This is a broader picture,” said one diplomat.
Another bone of contention meanwhile is what the IAEA suspects may have been Iranian research, mostly before 2003 but possibly ongoing, into creating a nuclear payload for a missile, including at the Parchin military base near the capital. AFP
