Word: iaea
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Then earlier this year, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) learned that Iran was cheating on nukes. Since it signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1970, Iran is allowed to pursue peaceful nuclear development under the watchful eyes of the IAEA. But in August 2002 exiled dissidents revealed that Iran had secretly built an underground uranium-enrichment facility at Natanz equipped with centrifuges that could spin out weapons-grade uranium. If not stopped, the plant could give Iran enough enriched uranium for two bombs a year, with the first available by the end of the decade (says...
...agency take Iran's noncompliance to the U.N. Security Council, which could impose punitive sanctions. To Tehran's dismay, the international community sided with the U.S. "The Iranians are behaving in a way that leads people to think they have something to hide," said a British official. The IAEA agreed unanimously in September to give Iran until Oct. 31 to explain itself or face possible U.N. sanctions...
Many analysts say any agreement to curb Iran's nukes deserves a cheer. But will Tehran live up to its promises? Administration skeptics are worried that the deal merely delays, not derails, an eventual confrontation. At the end of last week, Tehran delivered to the IAEA in Vienna a thick, indexed binder containing its "full" declaration detailing the hows and whys of its suspect behavior. The Iranian ambassador to the IAEA, Ali Akbar Salehi, told TIME the report admitted "mistakes" that resulted not from attempts to build weapons but from ignorance of IAEA requirements and a desire to be "discreet...
...regime-change" saber-rattling in Washington and the recent history of Iraq will certainly have helped the Europeans play "good cop" to Washington's out-of-control guy, and also may have helped sway the internal Iranian debate on the nuclear question. Although hard-liners have urged defiance of IAEA demands, President Mohammed Khatami's reformists have warned that failure to comply with the IAEA demands, even if they are deemed unfair in Tehran, would put the Islamic Republic in mortal danger, because the consequences of defiance would be ruinous sanctions and even, possibly...
...Like the details President's offer on North Korea, the specifics of Iran's agreement with the EU leaders - and its enforcement via the IAEA - remain to be seen. For those who see the problem as the regimes in Tehran and Pyongyang, rather than as the specifics of what they hold in their arsenals, an outcome that leaves each intact and more integrated into the international community is far from satisfactory. But just as Iraq may have provided a warning to Iran and North Korea of the fate that could await them - although its not quite clear whether Pyongyang drew...