IAEA insists Iran to assure the world for its secret nuclear programme; US think-tank to open in Tehran; French Foreign Minister warns of Israeli strike on Iran nuclear sites
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    • The chief UN nuclear inspector said a six-year probe has not ruled out the possibility that Iran may be running clandestine nuclear programs and urging Iran to reassure the world by ending its secretive ways. On the opening session of the IAEA’s 145-nation conference on September 29, Europe also urged Tehran to fully cooperate with the UN probe that is trying to assess all of its past and present nuclear activities. The EU said ‘the international community cannot accept the prospect of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons.’ Israel also took Iran to task for co-sponsoring Islamic attempts to label the Jewish state a nuclear danger to the Middle East. Iran, in turn, accused the US, Britain and France of breaking their nonproliferation commitments by giving Israel ‘full uninterrupted cooperation with, and assistance in, nuclear weapon technology1.’

    Meanwhile, the US has given approval for a research body to open an office in Iran. The American Iranian Council (AIC) was given a licence to establish a presence in Tehran by the US Treasury Department. The AIC is a policy think-tank devoted to improving relations between the US and Iran, which have been mutually hostile since Iran's 1979 revolution. A spokesman for the US state department, which guides the policy for issuing non-governmental organisation (NGO) licences to places under US sanctions, like Iran, Sudan and Cuba, said the move did not signal any change in policy. The US and Iran have had no diplomatic relations since the US hostages crisis in 1980 when Islamic revolutionary students took over the US embassy in Tehran. A US official quoted that the establishment of an AIC office in Tehran would encourage cultural exchange and mutual understanding between peoples while ‘trying to isolate the Iranian regime’2.

    Elsewhere, the French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said that Israel would strike arch foe Iran before it succeeding in developing nuclear weapons. He told this in an interview with Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, during a two-day visit to the region. Kouchner also said he hoped tough diplomacy and sanctions would persuade Iran to halt its uranium enrichment programme, which Israel and many Western countries believe is aimed at developing nuclear weapons. He further noted that “Iran with an atomic bomb is unacceptable at al … Talking, talking, talking, and offering dialogue, sanctions, sanctions, sanctions. Is the alternative to bomb first -- I think not”. Iran has always insisted its nuclear drive is entirely peaceful. Israel is widely regarded as the only nuclear armed state in the Middle East but it has never confirmed or denied having an arsenal3.

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