Iran changes tack in nuclear standoff

Iran's first fear about its controversial nuclear program has long been that it could provoke a US or Israeli military strike.

And a close second, until now, has been concern in Tehran that Iran could be referred to the United Nations Security Council for violations of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

But even as Western diplomats begin to step up efforts to go after Iran at the UN - canvassing began in Vienna Monday, in the wake of the latest Iran report by the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) - Iran appears to be changing tack.

Tehran is minimizing the risk of Security Council sanction, which in turn is undermining the carrot-and-stick approach used by the EU and Washington in recent years to convince Iran to end all nuclear efforts.

"To a certain extent, [Iranian officials] have lost their fear of the Security Council," says Davoud Hermidas Bavand, a professor of international law at Alameh University in Tehran. "Some even say that Iran should take the issue to the Security Council, against the IAEA," he says, because a technical issue has become "politicized."

Shortly after the hard-liner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was sworn in as president a month ago, Iran took a long-anticipated step of breaking IAEA seals at its Isfahan plant, ending a unilateral suspension of uranium-conversion activities.

The US says those activities - which the IAEA reports have converted seven tons of raw uranium into gas that can be enriched - are aimed at producing nuclear weapons. Iran denies the charge, saying it needs nuclear power, and that its right to master nuclear fuel technology is enshrined in the NPT.

The suspension was part of an earlier deal between Iran and Britain, France, and Germany, which sought to make it permanent in August by offering modest incentives. Iran rejected the proposal, which included no guarantees from the US of safety or waiving of current sanctions, prompting the Europeans to cancel meetings set for late August.

The confidential report, released Friday, found that 2-1/2 years of "intensive inspections and investigation" have not clarified outstanding issues, and that "Iran's full transparency is indispensable and overdue."

Still, the IAEA reported "good progress" in resolving a string of issues since 2003, and confirmed that traces of weapons-grade uranium found on centrifuge parts - held up by some US officials as evidence of a clandestine bomb effort - originated in Pakistan, as Iran has claimed.

Iran's new nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, said IAEA criticism was politically motivated, and that violations were "neither legal or technical."

"The tide of opinion in Tehran seems to have shifted," says Gary Samore, a nonproliferation official during the Clinton administration and vice president of the MacArthur Foundation in Chicago.

"Over the last two years, Iran's policy has been dominated by the desire to avoid referral to the Security Council, and Iran has been prepared to accept limits on its nuclear program in order to achieve that," says Mr. Samore, who is releasing an Iran dossier Tuesday under the auspices of the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London. "It does appear that Iran feels it's in a much stronger position."

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