Ali Asghar Soltanieh - Tag Search

(Updated below) The IAEA voted today 25-3 to censure Iran for defying a United Nations Security Council ban on uranium enrichment, and demanded that Iran cease further enrichment at its once-secret enrichment plant outside of Qom.

The full text of the resolution isn't yet available on the IAEA Web site; we'll post a link as soon as it goes up.

Today's vote is getting a lot of attention because both Russia and China voted in favor of the resolution. The Guardian suggests that it "could form the basis for a future binding resolution by the UN security council, which in turn could be used to impose sanctions." And Glyn Davies, the U.S. ambassador to the IAEA, said the resolution signaled that "the world's patience is running out."

There's a lot of confusion over whether Iran has formally rejected the IAEA draft proposal unveiled last month. News reports are careful not to use the word "rejected": Ha'aretz, for example, reports that world leaders "expressed disappointment on Friday that Iran had not accepted proposals."

The speculation apparently started on Monday with this Jerusalem Post story, which claimed that Iran "completely rejected" the IAEA draft and the Obama administration just doesn't want to admit it.

Mohammad Reza Bahonar, Iran's deputy parliament speaker, told Iran's official IRNA news agency that Iran "doesn't accept" yesterday's draft deal with the IAEA.

Discouraging -- but Bahonar doesn't speak for the government, so we shouldn't read too much into a single statement from a single official.

Iranian officials said today that the latest report on their nuclear program, released yesterday by the IAEA, "confirmed" that the program is peaceful.

"The report emphasized ... that Iran's nuclear activities are peaceful," said Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran's envoy to the IAEA. "It shows Iran has continued its cooperation with the agency ... but at the same time will not accept any political pressure to take measures beyond its legal commitments," he said.

Our analysis of the reports took a more skeptical view. The report concluded that Iran has slowed its uranium enrichment, and gave IAEA inspectors access to the Arak heavy water reactor. But it said Iran still refused to answer questions about the possible military applications of its nuclear technology.

The IAEA report will be used in September negotiations about possible economic sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program.

Apparently Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran's ambassador to the IAEA, said Iran is open to talks with the West "based on mutual respect" and without preconditions. The media are giving this statement a lot of play; the BBC says Iran would "welcome" nuclear talks.

Let's not get carried away. The Iranian government makes similar statements every six months or so. Here's Ahmadinejad from February:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said he would welcome talks with the US as long as they were based on "mutual respect".

Or Rafsanjani, from May of 2008:

... Rafsanjani, in a meeting with [the] Austrian ambassador to Tehran, said Iran is ready to cooperate and continue talks with the European Union 'under the condition of mutual respect.

These statements didn't lead to dialogue, of course, just a lot of excited headlines.