Iran senses nuke victory
2005-09-23 14:09
Tehran - Iran was on Friday sensing victory in a diplomatic battle over its nuclear programme, but regime officials nevertheless stepped up their bid to avoid even limited criticism from the United Nations atomic agency.
The European Union, fearful that Iran's atomic fuel work could be diverted to make nuclear weapons, failed to win a consensus among International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) member states for its bid to refer Tehran to the UN Security Council.
Even a softened EU draft resolution, which still finds Iran in non-compliance with nuclear proliferation safeguards, has met with tough opposition from Russia - leaving Iran feeling justified in its defiant stance.
Iran has also been lobbying China and non-aligned states such as South Africa - playing on a split between those who want to sanction Iran and those who fear pressure on the country, Opec's second oil producer, could spark yet another crisis in the world's main energy-producing region.
"The retreat of the Europeans over the Security Council is explained by Iran's firm position, the fact that the European demand had no logical basis and the objections of countries like Russia, China and non-aligned states," national security spokesman Ali Agha Mohammadi told AFP.
The stand-off deepened in August after Iran rejected demands from Britain, France, Germany that it abandon its enrichment programme in exchange for incentives and ended a freeze on enrichment-related work by resuming uranium conversion.
Conversion is the first step in making enriched uranium, which can be fuel for nuclear power reactors or the raw material for atom bombs - but Iran says its ambitions are strictly peaceful and such work is the right of any signatory of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
In seeking to preserve that "right", Iran's new hardline government has been distancing itself from the West and trying to marginalise Britain, France and Germany - with whom the previous more moderate regime had been dealing with for two years.
According to state television, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad telephoned India and Pakistan on Thursday to thank them for their support for Iran's position and to "denounce the European position".
"Before, the Europeans said they wanted to counter-balance the unilateralism of the United States. But today they are standing alongside the US," complained Mohammadi.
Playing on fears that oil prices could sky rocket, the head of Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guards, General Yahya Rahim Safavi, also warned Friday that "any sanction against Iran can make the oil price reach $100 a barrel."