IRAN threatened yesterday to ban spot inspections of its nuclear facilities after being ordered by the United Nations to stop its uranium enrichment activities. A senior official gave warning that Iran might even pull out of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty if economic sanctions were imposed against the country.
“This is a war. We may win or we may lose,” Hassan Rohani, Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, said at a press conference. The escalating rhetoric from Tehran came after an unanimous resolution by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Saturday calling for Iran to suspend all uranium enrichment-related activities before the agency’s next meeting on November 25. Iran agreed to suspend these activities last October.
But Iran announced in July that it had resumed building centrifuges to enrich uranium and had restarted work at a plant that produces uranium hexafluoride, the gas that feeds the centrifuges. Work on the first stage of the nuclear fuel cycle is permitted by the non-proliferation treaty.
Iran said it is interested in nuclear power only for peaceful purposes, but the US suspects that it is secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons.