AFP, Vienna, 8 Nov 2011- The UN atomic watchdog on Tuesday said it had credible information Iran was working on developing nuclear weapons, its toughest-talking assessment yet which Tehran rejected as baseless.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said it had ‘serious concerns’ based on ‘credible’ information indicating that the Islamic republic ‘has carried out activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device.’
The United States said the report showed that Iran had lied and said it would seek to ratchet up pressure and may seek new sanctions.
Although some of the activities listed in 12 dense pages of intelligence ‘have civilian as well as military applications,’ the keenly-awaited report said that ‘others are specific to nuclear weapons.’
Iran’s envoy to the Vienna-based IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, told the Iranian news agency Fars that the report was ‘a repetition of old claims which were proven baseless by Iran in a precise 117-page response.’
Using input from more than 10 foreign intelligence agencies plus its own information, the IAEA report listed in considerable detail Iranian work in 12 areas that practically covered every area needed for a weapon.
The picture is ‘pretty comprehensive when you want to develop a nuclear weapon. It has the core itself, it has a delivery system, it has the acquisition of the material,’ a senior official familiar with the IAEA probe said.
These included computer modelling of a nuclear warhead; testing explosives in a large metal chamber at the sprawling Parchin military base near Tehran; and studying how to arm a Shahab 3 medium-range missile with an atomic warhead.
The agency said its information indicated that ‘prior to the end of 2003, these activities took place under a structured programme, and that some activities may still be ongoing.’
The IAEA, whose board could decide to report Tehran to the UN Security Council again next week, called on Iran ‘to engage substantively with the agency without delay for the purpose of providing clarifications.’
‘The report details Iranian activities that can only be explained if the purpose was to develop a nuclear bomb,’ one Western diplomat in Vienna said, adding that Tehran had ‘offered no plausible explanation.’
US Senator John Kerry, head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the report made it clear that Iran ‘has not been truthful’ and that the international community had to ‘increase pressure’ on Tehran.
‘Iran’s leaders know what they need to do, the question is how we ensure they start doing it,’ Kerry said.
But Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi, speaking in Armenia before the report was released, said there was ‘no serious proof that Iran is going to create a nuclear warhead.’
‘We have repeatedly stated that we are not going to create nuclear weapons,’ Salehi said. ‘Our position has always been that we will never use our nuclear programme for purposes other than peaceful ones.’
President Ahmadinejad said his country ‘does not need an atomic bomb’ and would instead ‘act thoughtfully’ to confront US threats against it, according to state media.
However he warned: ‘If America wants to confront the Iranian nation, it will certainly regret the Iranian nation’s response.’
The hawkish foreign minister of Iran’s arch-foe Israel, Avigdor Lieberman, said before the release of the report that only ‘crippling sanctions’ would be able to thwart Iran, the Maariv newspaper reported.
But TV channels in Israel, which has stoked speculation in recent days of a pre-emptive strike on Iran, said the report’s ‘unprecedented severity’ made an imminent Israeli military strike unlikely.
Russia meanwhile expressed anger over the publication of the report, saying it risked damaging the chance of a renewal of nuclear talks between Tehran and the international community.
‘Russia is gravely disappointed and bewildered that the report is being turned into a source adding to the tensions over the problems connected to the Iranian nuclear programme,’ the foreign ministry in Moscow said.
Earlier Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, speaking in Berlin, said that Israeli threats were ‘extremely dangerous rhetoric’ that could result in a ‘catastrophe’ for the Middle East.
Germany’s foreign ministry called for ‘greater political and diplomatic pressure’ on Iran, while French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said sanctions should be toughened but ‘everything must be done’ to avoid a military conflict.