The IAEA officially censured Iran for the first time in four years. Director General Mohamed ElBaradei cited several reasons for the censure: Iran’s enrichment facility near Qom had been kept secret for over two years, in violation of Iran’s international obligations; and the inability of the IAEA to confirm that Iran was enriching uranium for peaceful purposes. ElBaradei said that “Iran’s late declaration of the new facility reduces confidence in the absence of other nuclear facilities under construction in Iran which have not been declared to the agency.” It is also thought that the enrichment facility buried deeply underground at the fortified site near Qom is too small to enrich uranium on a scale that could produce fuel for a power rector, and that the Qom cite could only be used to produce fuel for nuclear weapons. The censure passed with at 25-3 vote, with six abstentions. The United States, France, Germany, Russia and Great Britain all opposed the censure, saying that it would be provocative and counterproductive in light of recent nuclear negotiations with Iran. Tehran’s envoy to the IAEA said that the censure was “undue and hasty,” but ElBaradei said that nuclear negotiations with Iran had reached a “dead end.”
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