In Another Threat, Iran Warns It May Block Inspections 
By Elaine Sciolino
February 3, 2006
The New York Times
Original Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/03/international/middleeast/03iran.html

VIENNA, Feb. 2 — Iran formally notified the International Atomic Energy Agency on Thursday that it would end all voluntary nuclear cooperation with the agency if, as expected, its 35-country board referred Iran's nuclear activity case to the United Nations Security Council.
If the threat, in a letter from Ali Larijani, Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, to Mohamed ElBaradei, the director of the agency, is carried out, inspectors will no longer be permitted to conduct spot inspections and will lose access to crucial sites, including several military areas that have aroused the agency's suspicions. 
In addition, Iran has said it will resume its program to build 50,000 centrifuges at Natanz and begin full-scale production of enriched uranium, which can be used to produce electricity or to build nuclear bombs.
Iran delivered its threat as John D. Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, told the Senate Intelligence Committee that we judge that Tehran probably does not yet have a nuclear weapon and probably has not yet produced or acquired the necessary fissile material to produce one.
Nevertheless, he said, the danger that it will acquire a nuclear weapon and the ability to integrate it with ballistic missiles Iran already possesses is a reason for immediate concern.
Mr. Negroponte made no estimate of how much time Iran would require to produce a weapon. But he focused on the new government's increasingly strident threats against Israel, and said, The regime today is more confident and assertive than it has been since the early days of the Islamic republic.
That assertiveness was clear in Mr. Larijani's letter, which put into writing a threat that several Iranian officials have made orally.
Iran would have no other choice but to suspend all the voluntary measures and extra cooperation with the agency, the letter said. In that case, the agency's monitoring would extensively be limited and all the peaceful nuclear activities being under voluntary suspension would be resumed without any restriction.
The letter was delivered as the board opened talks on a resolution sponsored by Britain, France and Germany that for the first time would open the door to possible Security Council action against Iran. 
The resolution was challenged by the 16-country nonaligned bloc, which proposed amendments deleting all references to the Security Council and keeping Iran's case the responsibility of the nuclear agency. 
But the resolution as drafted enjoys the support of the United States, Russia and China, and is expected to win passage. Only Cuba, Syria and Venezuela have said they will definitely vote against it. 
Iran would not be violating any treaty obligations if it carried out its threat. But the action would almost certainly further erode confidence in Tehran as a reliable negotiating partner and fuel suspicion that its nuclear program was not peaceful. 
In various public statements. Iranian officials, including President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have explained that Iran is obliged under a law passed last year to end voluntary monitoring activities if its case is reported to the Security Council. 
Mr. Larijani has assured the I.A.E.A. that Iran has no intention of withdrawing from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, a senior agency official said.
But voluntary measures are different, and refer to Iran's de facto implementation of the treaty's 1997 additional protocol, which gives expanded rights to the agency to inspect a country's facilities. Iran has signed the protocol but has not ratified it, so is not obliged to comply with it. 
The letter delivered Thursday means Iran has rejected the demands of the five permanent members of the Security Council — the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain — as well as Germany and Dr. ElBaradei himself, that Iran once again close its uranium enrichment plant at Natanz. 
The plant was shut down under a November 2004 agreement with France, Britain and Germany that froze Iran's enrichment activities while the two sides negotiated economic and political incentives for Tehran. Tired of waiting for the rewards, Iran last month reopened part of the plant for what it called research, but it has yet to operate any of the machinery or process any uranium. 
Dr. ElBaradei sought to calm fears about the looming referral to the Security Council. We are reaching a critical phase, but not a crisis, he told reporters on Thursday, adding that there would still be a monthlong window of opportunity before the Security Council could take up the issue. He said the threat was not imminent, a word that he appeared to choose carefully to tamp down discussion of turning to a military solution. 
On Wednesday evening, Robert Joseph, the under secretary of state for proliferation issues, said in a speech, The president has repeatedly emphasized that all options are on the table to deal with the threat from Iran, but that our strong preference is to do so through effective diplomacy.
Until Thursday night, Iran's delegation was struggling with Dr. ElBaradei to find a face-saving formula that would allow Tehran to keep Natanz open but essentially nonoperational, said two officials involved in the talks. 
In a last-ditch effort to avoid any involvement of the Security Council, Dr. ElBaradei met with Iranian officials at their request at his home, the officials said. But the Iranian side offered no new substantive concessions, they said. 
Even on Thursday, multilateral diplomacy continued, as the senior Russian and Chinese nuclear negotiators met in Tehran to press Iran's leaders to avoid a crisis and close Natanz.
The Iranian letter reflects the victory of the faction in Iran that has argued, even before the victory of a hard-liner, Mr. Ahmadinejad, as president last summer, that the Europeans had not reached the nuclear agreement with Iran in good faith and were determined to permanently deprive Iran of its right to develop a fuel cycle for peaceful purposes.
As evidence, Iranian negotiators continually refer to a lengthy implementation document presented last August by the Europeans that asked Iran to give up two rights guaranteed under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty: its right to enrich uranium to produce electricity, and its right to withdraw from the treaty if its security is threatened. 
Indeed, in demanding that Iran close Natanz, the international community is essentially reinterpreting the treaty by holding Iran to a higher standard than other countries because, the United States and other countries argue, Iran cannot be trusted with the technology to produce nuclear fuel that can also be used for weapons. 
David E. Sanger contributed reporting from Washington for this article.