VIENNA - Iran agreed Sunday to open its nuclear activities to greater purview for United Nations experts seeking to revive their probe into suspicions that Tehran worked on atomic weapons.
Iran insists it never worked - or wanted - such arms, and the U.N’.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.
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.”
Nuclear physicist Yousaf Butt welcomed the agreement as a “positive development. ” At the same time, Butt, who often questions the methods and conclusions of the agency’s investigations, said that such detonators are commonly used in oil extraction and related work. As such, he said, experiments with them should not be surprising in oil-rich Iran.
The detonator issue was not on top of the list of the 2011 report of possible nuclear weapons concerns, with the agency mentioning other suspected activities that it said appeared to have no civilian applications.
As the two sides met over the weekend in Tehran, diplomats said Iran 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.
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 agency 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.
Iranian experts abandoned the experiments years ago and opted instead to develop their centrifuge-based enrichment program. The agency reported in 2008 that the laser facilities had been taken over by a private company that said it had no plans to enrich uranium.
Three years later, however, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad asserted that Iran still possessed uranium laser enrichment technology - a claim that the agency has not been able to prove or disprove.
Iran says it is enriching only to make reactor fuel, but uranium enriched to weapons-grade levels is used as the payload of nuclear missiles.
Washington and five other world powers are meeting Feb. 18 with Iran in Vienna as they work to turn a first-step agreement into a pact that permanently curbs Iran’s uranium enrichment in exchange for a full lifting of sanctions on the Islamic Republic.
Also on Sunday, hard-line Iranian lawmakers accused President Hassan Rouhani of halting a scheduled missile exercise, the state news agency said.
IRNA reported that 24 members of parliament said in a statement that the Supreme National Security Council, led by the president, stopped the annual test and did not approve its budget.
In a separate letter, the lawmakers accused Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif of preventing foreign experts to assist Iran with its missile technology, the semi-official Mehr news agency reported. It did not elaborate.
Iran also said Sunday that it plans to introduce a new generation of oil contracts by June that promise to be more attractive to foreign investors as it seeks to significantly boost production should international sanctions hobbling its vital energy industry be lifted.
Mahdi Hosseini, head of the contract revision committee in the Petroleum Ministry, said the new terms are being designed for a post-sanction era and aim to better align Tehran’s needs with the interests of international investors.
Tehran has not provided details on the exact shape of the possible new contracts, but they stop short of transferring ownership of the fields, Hosseini said. The government is banned from giving such concessions under Iran’s constitution.
Information for this article was contributed by Nasser Karimi, Adam Schreck and staff members of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 6 on 02/10/2014