A confidential report circulated to the International Atomic Energy Agency's 35 board members ahead of its 23-24 November meeting concluded that Iran continues to obstruct the agency's investigation into its nuclear activities. After more than three years of inquiry, inspectors remain unable to confirm that Iran's program is entirely peaceful.
IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei noted that Tehran has ignored UN Security Council calls to suspend uranium enrichment. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced plans to install 60,000 centrifuges in the coming months, a significant escalation. The report also confirmed that Iran had activated a second cascade of 164 centrifuges and begun feeding uranium hexafluoride into them, though two other cascades had spent most of their time running empty during vacuum tests.
Iran insists its program is intended solely for civilian energy production, while Western governments suspect it could be directed toward weapons development. World powers were weighing possible sanctions against Tehran.
Outstanding concerns include Iranian research into uranium metal using methods associated primarily with weapons programs, the acquisition of enrichment technology through illicit networks, plutonium separation experiments, and unexplained traces of plutonium and enriched uranium discovered at a waste site.
Historical summary. TurkishPress restated this wire report, first published in November 2006, in its own words.