Censure Spurs Iran to Ban U.N. Monitors

ISTANBUL, Turkey —  The United Nations’ nuclear watchdog voted Saturday to criticize Iran for concealing information and activities related to its nuclear program, prompting Tehran to bar U.N. inspectors from the country until further notice.

Iranian officials accused the United States of imposing the resolution on the International Atomic Energy Agency board in Vienna and linked its decision to keep inspectors out to the board’s resolution.

“We will not allow them to come until Iran sets a new date for their visit,” Hassan Rowhani, Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, said at a news conference in Tehran. “This is a protest by Iran in reaction to the passage of the resolution.”

The atomic agency, or IAEA, has been conducting inspections of Iran’s nuclear facilities for several months, and a senior U.S. official said late Saturday that the round scheduled to begin this weekend was to focus on a huge underground enrichment facility being built near the central Iranian city of Natanz. Last year, inspectors discovered traces of weapons-grade uranium at Natanz, raising suspicions about the activities there.

Tehran had abruptly postponed the inspection Friday, saying that it conflicted with preparations for the Iranian new year, which begins March 20. Rowhani’s edict appeared to turn the delay into a freeze, at least for now.

In telephone interviews from Vienna after the vote, diplomats and officials close to the IAEA said it was too early to tell whether the ban on inspections was a politically calculated outburst to satisfy a domestic audience or an effort to keep inspectors from further examinations of Iran’s nuclear facilities.

“It’s either a fit of pique because they had a painful week or maybe the IAEA was getting close to hitting a real nerve and they needed time to hide material,” a senior Western diplomat said in Vienna.

The United States has accused Iran of operating a clandestine nuclear weapons program, and the American ambassador to the IAEA, Kenneth Brill, called the inspection delay “very troubling.”

Iran says that its nuclear program is strictly for generating electricity and that the IAEA should have given the nation a clean bill of health instead of stinging criticism.

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Information Withheld

The IAEA’s resolution “deplores” Iran’s concealment of sensitive nuclear technology in October, when Tehran submitted what it said was a complete declaration to the IAEA. Inspectors later discovered undeclared research on advanced centrifuges that could produce weapons-grade uranium.

The resolution said the board would decide in June whether to respond further to the omissions after receiving another report from the inspection team.

Although the document does not mention responses, diplomats said Iran could be referred to the U.N. Security Council for possible economic sanctions.

The U.S. and its allies had pushed for a toughly worded response to Iran’s concealment efforts, which had been documented in four reports from the IAEA inspectors. They faced opposition from a bloc of 13 nonaligned countries on the board, including Malaysia, India and South Africa, which sought softer language.

After a week of closed-door negotiations, the version approved by the 35-member IAEA board was close to what the United States had sought. Aside from a few word changes, the only substantive compromise was the removal of a section that linked Iran’s nuclear program to its military.

Although Canada and Australia drafted the resolution, there was no doubt that the U.S. was the primary force behind the tough language.

A senior Western diplomat said earlier in the week that the Americans had negotiated the language with other board members for three weeks before the session started Monday.

There were hopes among some diplomats that Iran’s anger would blow over quickly.

Last September, Tehran said it would review its relations with the IAEA after the board imposed a deadline for Iran to provide full disclosure about its nuclear program and sign a formal agreement giving inspectors the right to conduct broader and more intrusive inspections. But a month later, in a deal negotiated with Britain, France and Germany, Iran agreed to provide the disclosure and signed the inspection agreement.

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Cautious Optimism

Mohamed ElBaradei, the IAEA’s director-general, expressed cautious optimism that relations would be repaired quickly once again.

“I am pretty confident that Iran will understand that we need to go within [our] time schedule and that the decision to delay the inspections will be reviewed and reversed in the next few days,” he told reporters in Vienna.

The delay in inspections is likely to make it difficult to get a complete picture of what is going on in Iran before the June board meeting, IAEA officials said.

“What is really going to count is what the IAEA turns up in the next three months, assuming the inspectors get in there,” said a Western diplomat in Vienna.

Diplomats close to the IAEA said that there was some concern that Iran might use the time to move equipment to hidden locations or try to destroy evidence of some of its nuclear experiments.

“Everyone remembers Kalaye,” said the Western diplomat.

Last March, Iranian authorities denied inspectors full access to a formerly secret nuclear workshop outside Tehran called Kalaye Electric Co. When the inspectors were permitted onto the site in August, they found that it had undergone extensive modification, including the removal of walls and the laying of new concrete floors.

Iranian authorities said the remodeling was routine, but people close to senior inspections officials said it provoked suspicions that an effort had been made to conceal unreported nuclear activities.

Those suspicions were confirmed when tests uncovered traces of weapons-grade uranium at Kalaye.

Iran was forced to acknowledge that it had conducted enrichment tests there, but it claimed that the traces were the result of contamination of centrifuges it had imported.

“Is it possible that, even as we meet, squads of Iranian technicians are working at still-undeclared sites to tile over, paint over, bury, burn or cart away incriminating evidence?” Brill asked in remarks to the IAEA’s board Saturday.

Some U.S. officials have predicted that inspectors would uncover additional undeclared activities, and that some would have links to the Iranian military.

Iranian officials have said that they are in full compliance with their obligations to the IAEA and that the elements omitted from the October declaration were inadvertent and insignificant oversights.

IAEA officials have said that the most important task of the uncompleted inspections is to determine the origins of the weapons-grade uranium discovered at Kalaye and at the enrichment facility under construction near Natanz.