Iran nuclear report creates IAEA tensions

The UN atomic watchdog's damning new report on Iran's nuclear programme has set the stage for a diplomatic showdown at IAEA headquarters this week, pitting Russia and China against Western powers.

In the first test of international resolve to deal with Iran since last week's report, Washington and its allies want the International Atomic Energy Agency's 35-member board on Thursday and Friday to ratchet up pressure on Tehran.

But amid speculation of an Israeli military strike, further stoked by a press report saying Mossad was behind last weekend's huge munitions blast in Iran, fellow UN Security Council heavyweights Beijing and Moscow are more reticent.

"This will be a tough one," one senior Western official in Vienna said. "We can all see from the statements coming out of various capitals, including Moscow, that there are strong views on this issue."

Despite stopping short of explicitly accusing Iran of developing nuclear weapons, the IAEA last Tuesday put out its hardest-hitting assessment to date, pinpointing activities with only one conceivable aim: producing the bomb.

Based on "broadly, credible" intelligence, its own information and some input from Iran itself, the IAEA said Iran had examined how to fit out a Shahab 3 missile -- with a range capable of reaching Israel --- with a nuclear warhead.

Washington and its Western partners want the IAEA board to approve what one European diplomat called a "clear resolution" condemning Iran. This could even go as far as to refer Iran to the UN Security Council.

The new report is "at least as momentous" as when Iran revealed in September 2009 that it had been secretly building a second uranium enrichment plant in a mountain bunker at Fordo near Qom, the senior Western official said.

That bombshell triggered a resolution condemning Iran at the IAEA that was backed by both Russia and China, and which brought the matter to the Security Council.

But Russia's unusually sharp criticism of the IAEA for even releasing the new report, calling it a "compilation of well-known facts ... intentionally presented in a politicised manner," lowers the chances of such a move.

Moscow's foreign ministry even went as far as to liken it to the false intelligence on Saddam Hussein's nuclear activities used by the United States and its allies to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

If Washington fails to push through a strong condemnation of Iran in Vienna, it is hard to see how it could push through the Security Council another resolution and what would be a fifth round of sanctions on Iran.

Resolutions in the IAEA board require only a simple majority -- and are often passed by "consensus," meaning without a vote -- but in the Security Council Russia and China both hold a veto.

The result, believes Mark Hibbs from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think tank, could be a compromise IAEA resolution of "grave concern" and setting Iran a deadline of, for example, March to cooperate with the agency.

"That would make it more difficult for Russia and China to tolerate no action by the board of the agency in the future," Hibbs told AFP.

Talks between US President Barack Obama and Russian and Chinese counterparts Dmitry Medvedev and Hu Jintao at bilateral meetings over the weekend in Hawaii appeared to indicate some progress, meanwhile.

"On Iran, in the wake of President Obama's discussions with President Medvedev ... in Hawaii, we are working with the Russians to achieve a shared response to the IAEA report," a Western diplomat told AFP.

The IAEA board is also due to discuss Syria following a visit last month by the agency's head of safeguards to discuss the Dair Alzour desert site, thought to have been a secret nuclear facility, allegedly bombed by Israel in 2007.

Damascus, which has denied any nuclear activities took place at the site, was "less than helpful" during the visit and a Syrian promise to produce more data appears to be merely playing for time, another Western envoy said.