UN nuclear watchdog officials arrived in Tehran on Monday for discreet talks on Iran’s suspect atomic activities, amid a worsening international showdown that has sent tensions and oil prices soaring. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is hoping for “concrete results” from the two days of talks focused on “the possible military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear programme,” the delegation’s leader, chief UN nuclear inspector Herman Nackaerts, said on departing from Vienna late Sunday. But he cautioned progress “may take a while.”
The last such visit, three weeks ago, yielded no breakthrough. Iran has taken an increasingly defiant stance against Western sanctions and Israeli threats of military action against it. On Sunday, its oil ministry announced crude exports to France and Britain had been halted, apparently in retaliation for an EU ban on Iranian oil that is being phased in during the next five months. Although Iran provides less than three percent of France’s oil imports and almost none of Britain’s, oil traders took fright at the prospect of Iran expanding its measure to the rest of Europe, which buys 20 percent of its crude.
The West has ratcheted up its sanctions to try to force Iran to stop enrichment, but with no success so far. Israel, which believes its existence is threatened by a nuclear Iran, has stepped up its warnings that it could launch air strikes, prompting the United States and Britain to urge restraint. Recent assassinations of three Iranian nuclear scientists, and attempted bomb plots against Israeli diplomats in several countries pointed to a possible covert war between the two Middle East arch foes.
