Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty,
The UN's nuclear watchdog says Iran has continued to enrich uranium despite United Nations calls for it to stop its nuclear activities by August 31.
The Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) made its assessment today in a confidential report filed to the UN Security Council and obtained by news agencies.
The report says Iran resumed enriching small amounts of uranium in recent days, and that the agency's probes had been blocked by a lack of cooperation on the part of Iran.
The findings could open the way to UN sanctions against Iran.
The UN Security Council had asked Muhammad el-Baradei, the head of the IAEA, to spell out on August 31 whether Iran had complied with a July 31 resolution.
The deadline expires at midnight on August 31, Tehran time.
With hours to go before the deadline, U.S. President George W. Bush warned Iran that there would be “consequences” if it fails to respond to the UN's demand. Bush told military veterans that the United States “will continue to work closely with our allies to find a diplomatic solution, but there must be consequences for Iran's defiance, and we must not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon.”
The U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, said the IAEA report “makes clear that not only has Iran not suspended uranium enrichment activities…, it is accelerating them.”
Bolton stressed that the report “shows a continuing pattern of a lack of cooperation by Iran, of obstructionism by Iran, of not allowing the IAEA inspectors to do the basic work that they need to do to prove that the Iranian program is peaceful.”
His conclusion is that “there is simply no explanation for the range of Iranian behavior, which we've seen over the years, other than that they are pursuing a weapons capability.”
