Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (C) and Iran's chief Nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili (2nd R) visit an exhibition of Iran laser science and technology in Tehran February 7, 2010.
In Paris, the visiting United States defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, said the Obama administration and the other nations had reached out sincerely to reassure Iran and entice it to negotiate an end to its nuclear program.
“All of these initiatives have been rejected,” Mr. Gates said. While “we must still try and find a peaceful way to resolve this issue,” he said, “the only path that is left to us at this point, it seems to me, is that pressure track. But it will require all of the international community to work together.”
Separately, the French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, said, “The only thing we can do, alas, is apply sanctions given that negotiations are impossible.” In Moscow, Konstantin I. Kosachyov, the head of the foreign affairs committee in the lower house of the Russian Parliament, was quoted by the Interfax news agency as urging the international community to prepare “serious measures.”
At issue is a proposal for Iran to swap its uranium stockpile for enriched uranium processed into fuel roads outside the country. Iran was initially reported last October to have accepted the proposal, but later backed away. Western officials say Iran has rejected the deal, but Tehran accuses the West of failing to respond to its proposals.
Several of the world powers dealing with Iran’s nuclear issue are in favor President Obama’s call for tougher sanctions, but China has said such action could forestall a diplomatic solution to the nuclear crisis.
On Monday, Iran’s ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, delivered a letter to the agency setting out the plan to begin enriching its stockpile to 20-percent purity, news reports said, after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad personally ordered his atomic scientists on Sunday to begin the process. Iran’s nuclear program is one of the most contentious issues between the West and Tehran, which rejects Western suspicions that it is seeking to build a nuclear weapon. In recent days Iran has sent a perplexing series of conflicting signals about plans that could move the country closer to producing weapons-grade fuel.
At a news conference in Paris, Mr. Gates was asked whether the United States had any guarantees that Israel would not attack Iran to halt Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. He avoided a direct answer.
“I think that everybody’s interest is in seeing this issue resolved without a resort to conflict,” he said. “We have to face the reality that if Iran continues and develops nuclear weapons, it almost certainly will provoke nuclear proliferation in the Middle East. And that’s a huge danger.”
He expressed hopes that any punishment against the Iranian government be kept to “economic and diplomatic channels.” Iran’s announcement on Monday seemed to take another step toward brinkmanship with world powers led by the United States, which is seeking a broad international consensus on tighter economic sanctions against Iran. The American, French and Russian calls for more stringent measures came hours after Iran made its intentions known to the atomic agency.
The White House and European Union also issued a statement Tuesday expressing concern about signs of a renewed crackdown by the Tehran government on protesters around the upcoming anniversary of the founding of the Islamic Republic.
In the strongly-worded statement, the United States and Europe condemned “the continuing human rights violations in Iran” since last year’s disputed elections, maintaining that Iran’s “large scale detentions and mass trials, the threatened execution of protestors, the intimidation of family members of those detained and the continuing denial to its citizens of the right to peaceful expression are contrary to human rights norms.”
On the nuclear issue, Iran’s state-run broadcaster Press TV quoted Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization as saying Iran would “start enrichment on Tuesday in the presence of inspectors and observers from the I.A.E.A.”
The I.A.E.A. had no immediate comment Monday morning. Both state television in Iran and news agencies reported that Mr. Soltanieh, the ambassador, said he had handed over the letter on Monday.
It remains far from clear that Iran has the capability to enrich fuel to the level ordered by Mr. Ahmadinejad, who is apparently seeking to increase pressure on the West to reopen negotiations on providing fuel for the medical reactor on terms more favorable to Tehran.
Indeed, Mr. Salehi was quoted by Reuters as suggesting that Tehran’s planned enrichment efforts would be halted if Iran received fuel enriched to 20 percent from abroad. “Iran would halt its enrichment process for the Tehran research reactor any time it receives the necessary fuel for it,” he said.
He also said a previously announced plan to build 10 new enrichment plants would begin in the next Iranian year starting on March 21, Reuters reported.
Mr. Soltanieh told The Associated Press that the enriched uranium would be used only in the Tehran reactor, whose present supply would be exhausted within a year.
“We cannot leave hospitals and patients desperately waiting for radioisotopes,” he said.
The developments coincided with new indications on Monday that Iran was seeking to develop a more sophisticated military capability, including a powerful antiaircraft missile system and remotely piloted drones for surveillance and attacks.
Iran had been trying to buy S-300 surface-to-air missiles from Russia, apparently to protect its nuclear facilities from airstrikes. Despite strong Western pressure not to supply the missiles, Russia has not given a clear indication of its intentions.
The official news agency IRNA quoted the Air Force commander, Heshmatollah Kassiri, as saying that, since Russia had for “unacceptable reasons” not delivered the missiles, “in the near future, a new locally made air defense system will be unveiled by the country’s experts and scientists which is as powerful as the S-300 missile defense system, or even stronger.”
The claim reflects continued nervousness in Tehran over potential military attacks on Iran’s nuclear sites by Israel or the United States, which have declined to rule out such action. Press TV reported Monday that Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi had inaugurated two production lines for the manufacture of advanced remotely piloted aircraft to improve its defense capabilities.
“The two drones, named Raad and Nazir, are capable of carrying out surveillance, detection and even assaults with high precision,” Mr. Vahidi said.
The developments came a few days after Mr. Ahmadinejad appeared to revive hope that Iran might accept a Western deal to swap much of its uranium for medical-reactor fuel that cannot be weaponized, a deal the Iranians had rejected. On Monday, Mr. Soltanieh blamed the West for failing to respond to “our positive logical and technical proposal” to exchange Iran’s uranium for imported nuclear fuel rods.
The United States and the I.A.E.A. had proposed the swap because it would deprive Iran of stockpiles that it could convert into bomb fuel, while providing Tehran with fuel rods that would be very difficult to use in a weapon. But as soon as Iranian negotiators brought that deal back to Tehran in October, they met a wall of opposition from the military, from hard-liners, and ultimately from opposition leaders.
Until now, Iran has never enriched significant quantities of fuel beyond the level needed in ordinary nuclear reactors, part of its argument that its program is for peaceful purposes. But any effort to produce 20-percent enriched uranium would put the country in a position to produce highly enriched uranium — at the 90 percent level used for weapons — in a comparatively short time, nuclear experts say.
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