Word: iaea
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...want to sprinkle on French fries. It's what nuclear chemists call uranium tetrafluoride, a grainy substance that can be used to make fuel for a nuclear reactor or fissile material for a bomb. In short, it's scary stuff, which is why the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confronted Iran late last month about a secret Iranian research effort called the Green Salt Project. Iran has long maintained that it wants to enrich uranium to generate nuclear power, not to make a bomb. But disclosure of the project--and its apparent links to the testing of high explosives--seems...
What happens next? A formal IAEA report on Iran's nuclear program, due March 6, is expected to conclude that the agency can no longer vouch for Iran's activities. That would pressure the Security Council to take meaningful steps when it addresses the matter next month. Tehran now has a few weeks to disclose all aspects of its nuclear program, but it has already denied IAEA requests to review documents and interview sources, and said after Saturday's vote that it would further curtail the nuclear watchdog's inspection powers...
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice helped firm up support for the IAEA vote by having aides brief foreign officials on a trove of documents that, according to U.S. diplomatic sources, expose a clandestine Iranian military nuclear-research operation. The documents, found in 2004 on a laptop computer, which U.S. intelligence believes came from an Iranian engineer, contain data on tests for high explosives, a design for a missile re-entry vehicle and a diagram of a green-salt production line. Separately, those areas of research could imply fairly benign intentions. But if an Iranian military agency has been coordinating...
...West throughout the region and provoke retaliation against U.S. interests in Iraq and elsewhere. Iran is threatening to retaliate if it is even referred to the Security Council, let alone made the target of sanctions. Tehran says referral will prompt it to end all voluntary cooperation with the IAEA. And oil prices have already risen on fears that Iran will retaliate by reducing its exports...
...diplomatic pressure that the U.S. and its allies are slowly building on Iran, Tehran could nonetheless resolve the standoff overnight. According to a draft of the IAEA resolution being circulated in Vienna this week, Iran could defuse the crisis by, among other things, reimposing the freeze on enrichment activities that it lifted last month and ratifying a treaty that requires more open access to nuclear inspectors. But if the past six months of defiant rhetoric from Tehran are any indicator of its intent, conciliatory concessions don't look very likely...