Iran is afraid of the IAEA report

At the beginning of next week, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will consider a report unfavorable for Tehran at its meeting. It claims that the agency, due to a lack of cooperation from Iran, cannot confirm that all nuclear material there is used only for peaceful purposes. This was the first report on the Iranian nuclear issue prepared under the new IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano.

However, this information did not convince China to support calls for the introduction of anti-Iranian sanctions. Regarding the IAEA report, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang noted that “the parties need to increase diplomatic efforts in resolving Tehran’s nuclear issue to promote dialogue.”

The Iranians, for their part, are again showing readiness for dialogue. In a letter addressed to the Director General of the IAEA, the Iranian representative to the agency stated his readiness to exchange low-enriched uranium for fuel rods for a nuclear reactor “simultaneously in one or more batches” on Iranian territory. However, the West wants to remove all low-enriched uranium reserves from Iran at once, in order to return them in the form of fuel rods only a year after the completion of the reprocessing process. According to Western experts, such a scheme will deprive Iran of its reserves of materials for creating nuclear weapons. Tehran has not admitted to working on an atomic bomb and says it needs enriched uranium to produce medical isotopes. The US State Department yesterday called Iran's exchange proposals a "distraction" and promised to begin discussing the introduction of sanctions against Tehran.

Deputy Foreign Minister of Russia Sergei Ryabkov recently explained that sanctions “should pursue the goal of strengthening the nuclear non-proliferation regime,” but Moscow will not support measures “that can be interpreted as punishment of an entire country and its people for certain actions or inaction.”

Alexander LOMANOV