Iran agrees to give more info on nuke program to IAEA

Iran agrees to give more info on nuke program to IAEA

PanARMENIAN.Net - Iran agreed Sunday, Feb 9, to provide additional information sought by the UN nuclear agency in its long-stalled probe of suspicions that Tehran may have worked on nuclear weapons, according to the Associated Press.

Iran insists it never worked — or wanted — such arms, and the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency was pushing ahead with its investigation with expectations that Tehran would continue to assert that all of its activities it is ready to reveal were meant for peaceful nuclear use.

Still, the IAEA's announcement that Tehran was ready to "provide information and explanations" for experiments in a type of detonator that the agency says could be used to trigger a nuclear explosion appeared to be the latest indication that Iran's new political leadership is seeking to ease tensions over its nuclear program.

The agency mentioned its concerns about detonator development three years ago as part of a list of activities it said could indicate that Tehran had secretly worked on nuclear weapons. The technology had "limited civilian and conventional military applications," it said back then, adding: "given their possible application in a nuclear explosive device ... Iran development of such detonators and equipment is a matter of concern."

The detonator issue was not on top of the list of the 2011 IAEA report of possible nuclear weapons concerns, with the agency mentioning other suspected activities that it said appeared to have had no civilian applications.

As the two sides met over the weekend in Tehran, diplomats told the AP that Iran now was ready to address agency questions about its suspected nuclear weapons work after years of dismissing the issue as based on fabricated U.S. and Israeli evidence.

But they also said that the process would get underway only slowly. The fact that the Iranians were ready to engage on the detonator issue first reflected caution by both sides after more than six years of stalemate on the probe, with the agency focused on a step-by-step approach, starting with less sensitive issues and progressing to the arms-related queries.

The process began after the two sides reached an agreement three months ago that gave the agency access to several previously off-limit sites not directly linked to any suspected weapons activities.

An IAEA statement Sunday said Iran had complied with the first steps of that deal and both sides on the weekend signed off on an additional "seven practical measures." Beyond the detonator experiments, they included Iranian agreement to provide "mutually agreed relevant information" on a site where Tehran experimented with laser uranium enrichment as well as a visit to the site where such work took place, according to the AP.

Iranian experts abandoned the experiments years ago and opted instead to develop their centrifuge-based enrichment program. The IAEA reported in 2008 that the laser facilities had been taken over by a private company that said it had no plans to enrich uranium.

Iran's nuclear program

Iran's leaders have worked to pursue nuclear energy technology since the 1950s, spurred by the launch of U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace program. It made steady progress, with Western help, through the early 1970s. But concern over Iranian intentions followed by the upheaval of the Islamic Revolution in 1979 effectively ended outside assistance. Iran was known to be reviving its civilian nuclear programs during the 1990s, but revelations in 2002 and 2003 of clandestine research into fuel enrichment and conversion raised international concern that Iran's ambitions had metastasized beyond peaceful intent. Although Iran has consistently denied allegations it seeks to develop a bomb, the September 2009 revelation of a second uranium enrichment facility near the holy city of Qom -constructed under the radar of international inspectors - deepened suspicion surrounding Iran's nuclear ambitions.

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