VIENNA—Iran has shown new openness about nuclear advances earlier off-limits to U.N. monitors but not enough to prove the programme is not geared to making bombs, the International Atomic Energy Agency said on Friday.
While an IAEA report painted a more positive picture of Iranian cooperation than before, it also confirmed Iran was testing technology that could give it the means to enrich uranium much faster -- in further defiance of demands to halt all sensitive nuclear activity or be hit with wider U.N. sanctions.
The IAEA findings, which also said Iran had failed to clear up all outstanding questions by an agreed February deadline, may be branded negative on balance by big powers and spur the U.N. Security Council to adopt more sanctions as early as next week.
The report also said Iran was avoiding meaningful responses to intelligence pointing to covert efforts to "weaponise" nuclear work by linking uranium processing, high explosives tests and design work on a missile warhead.
"The (weaponisation) studies is a matter of serious concern and critical to an assessment of a possible military dimension to Iran's nuclear programme," said the confidential report, obtained by Reuters.
"The agency will not be in a position to make progress towards providing credible assurances about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran before reaching some clarity on the nature of the alleged (weaponisation) studies, and without implementation of the Additional Protocol (wide-ranging, snap inspections)."
Without that, it said, there could be "no confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of the programme".
Iran Says Its Slate Is Clean
Iran has said it has satisfactorily answered all relevant IAEA questions about past activities, its nuclear slate is now clean and sanctions are unjustified and illegal.
Tehran says it aims to refine uranium only to the low level needed for power plant fuel so it can export more oil wealth.
IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei last year spoke of "diminishing knowledge" about Iran's advancing programme since it stopped observing the Additional Protocol in protest at sanctions steps.
Iran has lifted the veil somewhat since November by granting broader, if limited and one-off, access to inspectors, the new report said—a possible effort to forestall further sanctions.
It said Iran had given ElBaradei and other agency officials a long-sought look at work to launch a more durable centrifuge meant to overcome technical glitches hindering production of usable quantities of nuclear fuel by Tehran.
The report confirmed Iran was testing "IR-2" centrifuges, an upgrade of a design obtained from Pakistani-led nuclear smugglers, by feeding them with uranium gas in the pilot wing of its Natanz nuclear complex.
It said 12 IR-2s were being tested, 10 of them in an interlinked cascade. The report did not say when Iran would start installing large numbers in Natanz's main production hall to replace 3,000 older, unreliable "P-1" centrifuges now running. IR-2s can enrich 2-3 times faster than P-1s.
Iran had provided enough information for the IAEA to close inquiries into five other past issues, including traces of high enriched—possibly bomb grade—uranium found on lab equipment, to resolve proliferation concerns there.
Feeds