The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is including two senior weapons experts on its next mission to Tehran.
The nuclear watchdog issued a clear statement on the team’s focus, which would be obtaining information from Iranian officials about the country’s nuclear program.
For more than three years, Iran flatly refused to discuss charges it is covertly seeking atomic weapons despite being a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, saying they were based on fabricated Western intelligence seeking to defame the Islamic Republic.
But diplomats Friday told The Associated Press that weapons experts were part of the UN team and that Iran had reluctantly accepted their inclusion.
Diplomats said Iranian officials indicated openness to talking about all topics during the IAEA mission that ends early next week, but none were confident progress would be made.
Iran has blocked IAEA attempts to follow up on intelligence, and faced with continued Iranian obstruction, the IAEA summarized its body of information in November, in a 13-page document drawing on 1,000 pages of intelligence from US, European, Israeli, and other sources.
The IAEA also stated that some experiments Iran has undertaken can have no other purpose than developing nuclear weapons.
Since the discovery in 2002 that Iran was secretly working on uranium enrichment, the Islamic Republic has begun enriching uranium with thousands of centrifuges.
Iran says its enrichment program is only for civilian energy purposes, but is enriching its nuclear fuel stores to levels beyond what is required for a peaceful program. Its protestations of innocence have not been taken seriously by Western or UN officials.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said Friday at Davos that Tehran must comply with Security Council resolutions and prove conclusively that its nuclear program is not directed at making arms.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak, speaking separately at Davos on Friday said the world must quickly stop Iran from reaching the point where a military strike would not end Iran’s bid for nuclear weapons.
Barak said tougher sanctions are needed against Tehran’s oil and banking industries in order that “we all will know early enough whether the Iranians are ready to give up their nuclear weapons program.”
“We are determined to prevent Iran from turning nuclear,” Barak told reporters during the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum.
“It seems to us to be urgent, because the Iranians are deliberately drifting into what we call an immunity zone where practically no surgical operation could block them,” he said.
Iran, whose officials have called for the destruction of Israel, has referred to Israel as a “one bomb state.”
The United Nations has imposed four rounds of sanctions against Iran, but veto-wielding Russia and China who are dependent on Iranian oil say they see no need for additional punitive measures.
That has left the US and the European Union to try to pressure other countries to follow their lead in imposing tougher sanctions, but their much publicized oil embargo will only start in July and Obama’s sanctions on Iran’s major bank will take effect only in two months. Iran can accomplish much in that time period.
