Iran threatens to end cooperation with the IAEA, quit NPT

Tehran may well break off cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency-IAEA and withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty after the IAEA’s 35-nation board of governors Friday, Nov. 27 approved a resolution voicing serious concern about its failure to comply with international obligations and referring the issue to the UN Security Council. The resolution carried by 25:3 called on Iran to halt the construction of its second enrichment site at Fordo near Qom and declare its other covert nuclear sites. All five UN Security Council permanent members supported the censure, including Russia and China.
The White House commented that time is running out for Iran. A US official spoke of a “package of consequences” if Iran’s non-compliance continues.
Capping his 12-year tenure, the retiring IAEA director Mohamed ElBaradei was forced to admit Thursday, Nov. 26 that his efforts to work with Iran had reached “a dead end.” He told the agency’s board of governors: “There has been no movement on remaining issues of concern which need to be clarified for the agency to verify the exclusively peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program.”
Therefore, debkafile‘s sources report, by entering into negotiations with the big powers this summer – which led nowhere, then signaling its acceptance in principle of his proposal to send 70 pc of its enriched uranium overseas to be reprocessed for medical research – then backing off, Iran gained most of 2009 for developing its nuclear weapon program in peace and quiet.
Tehran will most likely make its response typically ambivalent. But by quitting the NPT, Iran would free itself of international obligations with regard to its nuclear activities. Our sources note that this will not change much. Anyway, while holding talks on its program with six world powers and throwing an occasional bone to IAEA inspectors, Tehran does as it pleases and conceals most of its nuclear activities heedless of world censure.
In his parting words to the IAEA governors, ElBaradei said that in his view, “the proposed agreement (for overseas enrichment) presented a unique opportunity after many years of animosity and hostility to… create a space for negotiation. This opportunity should be seized,” he said in a last appeal to Tehran, “and it would be highly regrettable if it was missed.”
This was his final admission that the agency had failed in all its efforts to open up the Iranian program to controls and inspection, just as it failed to prevent North Korea from building its nuclear arsenal. Nonetheless, the United States and most other world powers connived with Dr. ElBaradei to blind the world to the true state of Iran’s rogue program. They even gave up clamoring for a halt in uranium enrichment as a precondition for negotiations.
For weeks now, they played along with director’s obfuscation tactics and insisted Iran had accepted the enrichment proposal, the sole outcome of the latest rounds of talks with Iran in Geneva and Vienna – even after Tehran deliberately missed the Oct. 23 deadline for its acceptance.
The IAEA director’s “dead end” statement applies equally to the six powers’ bid to engage Iran in negotiations on its nuclear program and the wholesale concealment of its activities. Israeli leaders, including president Shimon Peres, prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, defense minister Ehud Barak, presented an equally false face when they reiterated that Iran’s nuclear aspirations are the business of the international community rather than Israel. They knew all the time that world powers were spending more time fabricating a false picture of Iran’s nuclear attainments the facts than dealing with them. The IAEA director has finally come clean for them all.

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