Iran yesterday rejected a suggestion by the top U.N. nuclear official that it was seeking the capability to build nuclear weapons, the Sydney Morning Herald reported (see GSN, June 17).
“It is my gut feeling that Iran would like to have the technology to enable it to have nuclear weapons,” International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei told the BBC this week. The United States and other Western nations suspect that Iran's nuclear program is geared toward nuclear-weapon development, an allegation that Tehran has denied for years.
"If you quoted him right, he is absolutely wrong," Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran's ambassador to the U.N. nuclear watchdog, told reporters. "We don't have any intention of having a nuclear weapon at all. A nuclear weapon is not in our defense doctrine."
"We do not consider a nuclear weapon (to be) any advantage. We consider it as [a] vulnerability for us. We never had this and we will never have [a] nuclear weapon," Soltanieh said.
In an apparent verbal slip-up, he added: "The whole Iranian nation are united ... on (the) inalienable right of (having) nuclear weapon."
Asked to elaborate, Soltanieh corrected himself.
"I said our peaceful uses of nuclear energy -- and of course our condemnation of nuclear weapons," he said. "We will not deprive our great nation from benefiting from peaceful uses of nuclear energy" (Simon Morgan, Sydney Morning Herald, June 18).
In a reference to the United States, Soltanieh called on "those who have declared a change in their foreign policy" to abandon "provocative conducts" in favor of "dialogue," the Associated Press reported.
The United States blamed Iran for delaying dialogue by refusing to cooperate with a U.N. investigation of its nuclear activities or to halt its uranium enrichment program, an effort that could produce nuclear power plant fuel but also nuclear weapon material.
"Iran's current posture ... deeply undermines Iran's assertion that its nuclear program is exclusively peaceful in nature," Geoffrey Pyatt, U.S. deputy chief of mission, said at a closed meeting of the IAEA governing board.
Washington remains open to freezing new sanctions if Tehran agrees to suspend its uranium enrichment work, Pyatt said (George Jahn, Associated Press I/Yahoo!News, June 17).
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton yesterday reaffirmed the Obama administration's commitment to pursuing nuclear dialogue with Iran despite the contested results of the country's presidential election.
"We are obviously waiting to see the outcome of the internal Iranian processes, but our intent is to pursue whatever opportunities might exist in the future with Iran" to engage in discussions, Clinton said (Robert Burns, Associated Press II/Google News, June 17).
Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who wields absolute authority over Iran's nuclear policies, is unlikely to be unseated despite the widespread protests now gripping the country, a high-level administration official told the Washington Post.
"We can't lose sight of the fact that [the Iranians] are enriching uranium every day," the official said. "They were a threat before the election. They are a threat today, and the clock keeps ticking" (Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, June 18).
The disputed election has the potential to be a "game changer" on Iran's nuclear policy, nonproliferation expert Joseph Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, wrote in the Huffington Post yesterday.
"This is no longer Khamanei's Iran," he wrote. "The clerical regime has been delegitimized for millions of Iranians. Even under the best case for the regime -- a recount that declares [incumbent President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad the winner by a majority -- the president will be weakened. He will be the imposed leader, not the hero of the disfranchised against the corrupt elite. He will be unable to use the nuclear issue to stir nationalist passions, posing as the hero-president defending the nation against the oppressive West. He will be the oppressor."
"The [nuclear] program has nothing to do with Iran's real problems. It offers no solution to the economy, to equality, to security. It is a drain on the country, not its salvation. It will not be abandoned quickly, but its role and importance could be greatly reduced, its progress slowed, its threat contained," he wrote (Joseph Cirincione, Huffington Post, June 17).