Word: iaea
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...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...
...Germany and Britain to achieve a negotiated solution to the crisis have stalled on Iranian intransigence. Now, U.S. and EU officials say that this week, for the first time, they've won the all-important backing of veto-wielding Security Council members Russia and China for a toughly worded IAEA resolution. "It is important that [the Iranian leaders] understand ... that we are united in determining that they should not be able to carry on flouting their international obligations," British Prime Minister Tony Blair told Parliament on Wednesday...
...Russian support came at a price: At Moscow's insistence, the Security Council will not act on the Iran issue until after the next full meeting of the IAEA in March. Before then, IAEA director-general Mohamed ElBaradei will provide member states with a full report, which, barring a complete climb-down by Tehran, will be the Nobel Peace Prize winner's harshest assessment to date of Iran's nuclear program, and will state his inability to certify that it exists for exclusively benign purposes. The delay will also give Russia five more weeks to pursue its own efforts...
...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...