Tehran's Resumed Nuclear Research 'Is Irreversible'

Gareth Smyth and Najmeh Bozorgmehr, The Financial Times:

Hamid-Reza Asefi, Iran's foreign ministry spokesman, yesterday insisted Tehran's resumption of nuclear research was "irreversible", despite a meeting of European Union and US officials and their Chinese and Russian counterparts in London today to consider action.

Germany, France and Britain, who led the EU in talks with Tehran on curbing the nuclear programme, will join the US in arguing at today's meeting with China and Russia that Iran be referred to the United Nations Security Council, a step that could lead to sanctions, despite Tehran's warning on Friday this would prompt it to end its acceptance of snap UN inspections of its atomic facilities. Iran's economy minister, Davoud Danesh-Jafari, said any sanctions could hurt the sponsors by raising oil prices.

Iran's decision to restart work at the Natanz plant last week led the UK, France and Germany to declare their talks with Iran had reached a dead end and to launch a diplomatic campaign to refer the dispute to the Security Council. Defending the resumption, Iran's foreign ministry on Saturday said Tehran remained open for negotiations and was still suspending "fuel production", the enrichment needed for power generation or potentially, says the west, a bomb.

But European and US diplomats say Iran must reverse in full last week's decision if it wants to return to talks. They insist restarting any enrichment-related activity including small-scale enrichment at a pilot project at the Natanz plant - even if for research purposes - would bring Tehran closer to mastering the nuclear technology needed for the production of atomic weapons.

Tehran is set to appoint three experienced diplomats as ambassadors to France, Germany and the UK. European officials had expressed fears that fundamentalists would follow the previous envoys, removed in October.

But the choice for Paris is Ali Ahani, ambassador to the EU and Luxembourg; the new envoy in London will be Rasoul Movahedian, former ambassador to the Czech Republic and Portugal; and Mohammad-Mehdi Akhoundzadeh, Iran's ambassador to international bodies in Vienna, will go to Berlin.

One senior official in Tehran said the three ambassadors might lack the authority and experience of their predecessors, but were not considered radicals.

The diplomatic move came amid suggestions that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, was seeking to temper the radicalism of President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, who took over in August. "Almost every day the leader is warned by the revolution's veterans that Ahmadi-Nejad will fail, and so the leader is keeping a distance from him," said a former official in Tehran.READ MORE

In a press conference on Saturday, the president evaded invitations to repeat his calls last year for Israel to be moved to Europe or "wiped off the map" by the Palestinians. Instead, he reflected Tehran's official suggestion of a referendum of indigenous inhabitants of historical Palestine, including the Jewish state.

On the nuclear issue, Mr Ahmadi-Nejad asserted Iran's "inalienable right" to technology as a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty and pledged continued IAEA co-operation.

He said "1,400 man-days" of IAEA inspections in Iran, "unprecedented" in the agency's history, had not found "the least sign of diversion [from civilian to military use] ".