Iran resumed processing uranium at a key nuclear facility yesterday, undoing more than two years of negotiations with three European countries aimed at resolving suspicions that the material would be diverted to produce atomic weapons. The decision to restart a uranium-conversion facility in the town of Isfahan flies in the face of warnings from the U.S. and European capitals that such a move could send the issue of Iran's nuclear program to the United Nations, which has the authority to impose economic sanctions or an oil embargo.

Iranian officials told Britain, France and Germany it was rejecting a European offer that held out promises of economic incentives in exchange for Iran's decision to dismantle much of its nuclear program, which the U.S. has charged is aimed at developing nuclear weapons.

The action came ahead of an emergency meeting of the 35-member board of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) today in Vienna, Austra, to discuss Iran's program.

U.S. State Department spokesman Adam Ereli accused Iran of "thumbing its nose at a productive approach."

Ereli also suggested the United States could deny a visa for Iran's new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to attend a U.N. summit in New York next month.

Western officials likened Iran's step to an "in-your-face move" by a nation in a political transition, with a new president in tune with the reigning conservative mullahs. But Iranian officials, who insist their nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, say the activity is part of Iran's right to develop nuclear power.

"Part of this for the Iranians is to make a statement about sovereignty and national pride," says Miriam Rajkumar, a South Asia expert in nuclear affairs with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "They don't want to end up an international pariah like North Korea, but for them it really is an issue of sovereign rights."

Iraq's nuclear program


Background: Iran says it is developing nuclear power because its growing population needs more energy than its oil can provide.

• The United States has been pushing for international action to halt Iranian nuclear development that has the potential to produce material for nuclear weapons.

• Under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which Iran has signed, a country is allowed to enrich uranium to make fuel for nuclear power. The key problem is that the same technology can be used to enrich uranium further in order to make nuclear weapons. Iran says it needs to be able to develop enriched uranium itself because outside suppliers might be subject to U.S. pressure. Iran also is building a heavy-water nuclear reactor which could provide plutonium, an alternative source of fuel to highly-enriched uranium for a nuclear explosion.

The latest developments: Over the weekend, Iran rejected an offer by a trio of European nations for economic incentives in exchange for giving up all nuclear activities that could lead to a bomb. Iran's resumption of uranium conversion yesterday is set to be taken up at an emergency meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency today — a move that could result in referral of the issue to the United Nations Security Council for possible economic and political sanctions. • The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is a 1968 agreement under which countries with nuclear weapons at the time were allowed to keep them but have agreed not to give them or the technology to anyone else. However, other countries are allowed to develop nuclear power for peaceful purposes but only under the inspection of the IAEA. If they make the fuel themselves it has to be under strict inspection.

sources: Reuters, BBC online, The Christian Science Monitor

Last week, representatives of Germany and France, which along with Britain have been negotiating with Iran over its nuclear ambitions, said any resumption of activities at facilities sealed months ago would probably trigger an IEAE referral of Iran to the U.N. Security Council. Whether the Security Council would take strong punitive action against Iran remains in doubt — and Iran appears to be betting it won't, experts say — given Iran's close and growing ties to Security Council members Russia and China, who might back it.

Russia is building a nuclear reactor in the Iranian city of Busheher, and China is strengthening its energy ties to Iran. In October, Iran signed an agreement to supply China with natural gas over 30 years, while it granted the Chinese state-owned petrochemical company, Sinopec, a 50 percent stake in one of its major oil fields.

The European offer to Iran envisages a major new international energy role for Iran, French officials say. In an interview published Sunday, French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said the plan proposes making Iran a "major actor in the transport of oil between Central Asia and Europe." But Iran's snub of the European offer falls in line with a calculated shift in Iran's geopolitical interests, some experts say, away from Europe toward new regional partners including India and China.

Iran's role as a major supplier of energy for the world market — especially at a time of record-high oil prices — is precisely why its leaders are betting that the international community may not get tough over its nuclear program, experts say.

Douste-Blazy called Iran's decision to resume uranium conversion "grave and troubling" and a "clear violation" of a 2004 agreement reached in Paris under which Iran had pledged to freeze nuclear activities while it held negotiations with European nations.

The Europeans proposed allowing Iran to run its civilian nuclear power plants by providing it with a guaranteed source of fuel and other economic incentives, but requiring Iran to forswear the sensitive nuclear fuel-cycle technology that could be used to produce nuclear bombs.

Yesterday, Iran delivered a blunt, unsigned communique to the British, French and German embassies in Tehran rejecting the deal.

"The proposal is extremely long on demands from Iran and absurdly short on offers to Iran, and it shows the lack of any attempt to even create a semblance of balance," said the Iranian statement, delivered by Pirouz Hosseini, a senior Iranian Foreign Ministry official. "It amounts to an insult on the Iranian nation for which the E3 [France, Britain and Germany] should apologize."

Douste-Blazy said the tone of the Iranian letter was "particularly alarming and contrary to the spirit of the dialogue we have had with Iran for the past two years."

Within the atomic-energy agency, a major problem for the West will be articulating a clear set of rules acceptable to other developing countries that already have or may wish to develop nuclear power, analysts said.

Brazil, South Africa and other nations that may want to develop their own nuclear fuel cycle may worry about the precedent they would set by requiring Iran to give up that technology. But the Europeans hope that these countries, as well as Russia, would be willing as a first step to endorse a resolution calling on Iran to halt uranium conversion and return to the negotiating table.

Critics of Iran question why Iran, which has vast reserves of petroleum, would need nuclear energy. Iran has responded by pointing out that it was the U.S. that first urged it to pursue a nuclear-energy program while the pro-U.S. shah was in power.

The Isfahan facility covers over 150 acres spread along mountains outside the city. Parts of the facility were built in tunnels in the mountains as protection from airstrikes. It is also surrounded by radar stations and anti-aircraft batteries.

Iran learned a lesson from the 1981 Israeli airstrike against Iraq's main nuclear reactor. Iran has spread its facilities over several locations, each with underground installations. The Isfahan facility and the uranium enrichment plant in Natanz house the heart of the country's nuclear program.

The Isfahan plant carries out an early stage of the cycle for developing nuclear fuel, turning yellowcake into UF-6 gas, the feedstock for enrichment.

In the next stage of the process — which Iran has said it will not resume for the time being — the gas is fed in centrifuges for enrichment. Uranium enriched to a low level is used to produce nuclear fuel; further enrichment makes it suitable for use in an atomic bomb.

The plant will soon start turning yellowcake into UF-4, a preliminary stage before UF-6, the state news agency reported.

Earlier, Iran converted some 37 tons of yellowcake into UF-4. Experts say that amount could yield 200 pounds of weapons-grade uranium, enough to make five crude nuclear weapons.

Compiled from The Associated Press, The Washington Post,

The Christian Science Monitor

and Los Angeles Times.