Feud over Iran’s nukes continues

Iran’s deal with the atomic energy agency might prevent more U.N. sanctions.

MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS

WASHINGTON — The dispute over Iran’s nuclear program is far from over, despite Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s assertion before the U.N. General Assembly that his government considers the issue “closed.”

“The case is not closed,” retorted Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns on Wednesday, a day after Ahmadinejad’s remarks. “He is completely mistaken, and the international community is not going to allow him to forget about the fact that his country is operating against the wishes of the [U.N.] Security Council.”

Iran has defied demands that it suspend the enrichment of uranium, a process that can produce low-enriched uranium for electrical production or highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons, depending on its duration.

The Bush administration, backed by France and Britain, is campaigning for tighter U.N. sanctions against Iran. Iran, however, reached an agreement with the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency last month to reveal the full extent of its long-secret program after years of non-cooperation — a step that might avert further U.N. sanctions.

President Bush has refused to rule out using military force against Iranian nuclear facilities, and his charges that Iran is training and arming Shiite Muslim militias in Iraq have fueled concerns that his administration has begun making a case for attacking the Islamic republic. Iran denies the allegations.

Senate action

The Democratic-controlled Senate on Wednesday gave symbolic support to the Bush administration by voting 76-22 for a nonbinding resolution endorsing the use of military force and other “instruments” of U.S. power in Iraq to halt the “violent activities and destabilizing influence” of Iran and “its proxies.” The resolution also calls on the administration to declare Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a foreign terrorist organization.

Under the Aug. 21 agreement with the IAEA, Iranian officials are to answer a series of outstanding questions about unexplained activities at a uranium mine, work on advanced centrifuges — the machines used to enrich uranium — and a document on the casting of uranium metal spheres, which can only be used in nuclear weapons.

U.S. and European officials have criticized the IAEA deal, saying it gives Iran time to complete the installation of 3,000 centrifuges in an industrial scale facility in Natanz. They could produce enough highly enriched uranium for one bomb a year.

Iran has warned that it will repudiate its agreement with the IAEA if new sanctions are imposed.

U.S. and European officials say they’re concerned that Iran will cooperate just enough to win a clean bill of health while leaving key questions about its program unanswered, and its defiance of the Security Council would go unpunished.

In anticipation of such a development, the United States, Britain and France are discussing the possibility of European governments imposing their own “sanctions of the willing” if the United Nations effort founders.