Vienna – Iran formally informed the International Atomic Energy Agency on Thursday that it will stop all “voluntary” nuclear cooperation with the agency if, as expected, the 35-country agency board reports Iran’s nuclear case to the U.N. Security Council.
The threat, contained in a letter from Ali Larijani, Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, to Mohamed ElBaradei, director of the nuclear agency here, means that the agency would no longer be allowed to do voluntary spot inspections and would lose access to key sites and installations.
In addition, Iran has said it will resume its program to eventually build 50,000 centrifuges at Natanz and begin full-scale production of enriched uranium, which can be used to produce electricity or to help build nuclear bombs.
Iran “would have no other choice but to suspend all the voluntary measures and extra cooperation with the agency,” the letter, made available to The New York Times, said. “In that case, the agency’s monitoring would extensively be limited and all the peaceful nuclear activities being under voluntary suspension would be resumed without any restriction.”
The letter was delivered as the decision-making board opened emergency, closed-door talks Thursday to decide whether to pass a resolution sponsored by Britain, France and Germany that for the first time would open the door to eventual Security Council action against Iran.
The resolution was criticized by the 16-country non-aligned bloc that proposed amendments deleting all references to the Security Council and demanding that Iran’s case remain the responsibility of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog agency here.
But the resolution enjoys the support of the United States, Russia and China and is expected to win the majority of votes needed for passage.
In various public statements, Iranian officials, from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on down, have threatened to end voluntary cooperation. But this is the first time that Tehran has delivered its threat in writing to the agency.
The letter did not state when Iran would stop its voluntary activities with the international agency. But an Iranian official said that it would happen “within a day or two” of passage of the resolution, which could come as early as today.