Tehran hosts UN atomic watchdog

UN atomic watchdog officials began a visit to Iran yesterday to discuss Tehran’s suspect nuclear drive, as Iranian lawmakers held off on retaliatory action against a looming EU oil embargo.

We are looking forward to the start of a dialogue, a dialogue that is overdue since very long

The three-day International Atomic Energy Agency mission is to address evidence suggesting Iran’s activities include nuclear weapons research.

The visit was seen as a rare opportunity to maybe alleviate a building international showdown over Iran’s nuclear programme that has seen a ratcheting up of sanctions and talk of possible Israeli military action.

“In particular we hope that Iran will engage with us on the possible military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear programme,” Herman Nackaerts, the IAEA’s chief inspector leading the delegation, told reporters in Vienna as he left.

“We are looking forward to the start of a dialogue, a dialogue that is overdue since very long.”

Iran’s parliamentary Speaker, Ali Larijani, called the visit a “test” for the UN agency, according to the website of the official IRIB state broadcaster. If the IAEA officials were “professional,” then “the path for cooperation will open up”, he said.

“But if they deviate and become a tool (of the West), then the Islamic republic will be forced to reflect and consider a new framework” for cooperation, Mr Larijani added.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi welcomed the visit.

“I’m hopeful and very optimistic about this trip of the high delegation of the IAEA to Iran,” he told reporters in Addis Ababa, where he was attending an African Union summit. “Right from the beginning we have indicated explicitly, expressed explicitly, that Iran is never, ever after nuclear weapons,” he said.

Iran, which maintains its programme is exclusively for peaceful purposes, is increasingly furious at Western measures aimed at making it halt uranium enrichment.

It has defiantly stepped up enrichment at a new bomb-proof bunker in Fordo near the Shiite holy city of Qom.

It has also reacted fiercely to new sanctions targeting its oil and finance sectors, notably the European Union’s announcement of a ban on all Iranian oil imports within the next five months.