Iran’s report card spells trouble

The UN nuclear watchdog is expected this week to issue its most detailed report yet on research in Iran seen as geared to developing atomic bombs, heightening international suspicions of Iranian intentions and fuelling Middle East tension.

Western powers are likely to seize on the International Atomic Energy Agency document, which has been preceded by media speculation in Israel of military strikes against Iranian nuclear sites, to press for more sanctions on the oil producer.

But Russia and China fear the publication now of the IAEA’s findings could hurt any chance of diplomacy resolving the long-running nuclear row and they have lobbied against it, signalling opposition to any new punitive UN measures against Iran.

The report is tentatively scheduled to be submitted to IAEA member states on Nov. 9 before a quarterly meeting the following week of the agency’s 35-nation board of governors in Vienna. It “will be followed by a US-European Union push for harsher sanctions against Iran at the UN Security Council, where Western powers will meet stiff resistance from Russia and China,” said Trita Parsi, an expert on US-Iran relations. The document is expected to give fresh evidence of research and other activities with little other application than atomic bomb-making, including studies linked to the development of an atom bomb trigger and computer modelling of a nuclear weapon.

The report will flesh out and expand on concerns voiced by the IAEA for several years over allegations that Iran had a linked programme of projects to process uranium, test high explosives and modify a missile cone to take a nuclear payload. It is not believed to contain an explicit assessment that Iran is developing a nuclear weapons capability. “The IAEA’s report will not likely contain any smoking guns,” said Mark Hibbs of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Israel bombed an Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981 and launched a similar strike against Syria in 2007 — precedents lending weight to its threats to take similar action against Iran.

But many independent analysts see any such mission as too much for Israel to take on alone. Parsi said Israeli threats of military action are a pressure tactic to get Washington and Europe to adopt tougher sanctions against Iran. But it he said would be dangerous to dismiss Israel’s “sabre-rattling” out of hand, he said.