On Wednesday outgoing Iranian President Mohammad Khatami said Iran would resume some work on its nuclear fuel cycle, which the West suspects is part of a clandestine effort to produce a bomb.
“Iran made some commitments to suspend their uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities. We expect them to abide by that commitment,” White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters.
“If Iran is going to violate their agreements, then we would obviously be looking at discussing with (the) Europeans, who have also committed to doing so, looking at going to the (United Nations) Security Council,” McClellan added.
Khatami said the nuclear fuel work would fall short of actually producing enriched uranium, but stressed that Iran would also ultimately resume its enrichment program.
Three European Union powers — Britain, France and Germany — plan to offer Iran a limited package of nuclear, economic and political incentives next week to give up suspect nuclear work.
But EU diplomats said the European offer was predicated on Iran agreeing to maintain indefinitely its suspension of uranium enrichment, nuclear fuel reprocessing and related activities.
Iran regards nuclear fuel cycle activities as a right under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, meant to prevent the spread of atomic weapons while allowing civilian nuclear work, and wants to be allowed to keep at least a pilot enrichment program.
Britain, France and Germany remain adamant, with strong U.S. backing, that they will agree to no enrichment or reprocessing activity.
“If they were to begin those activities again, they would be violating the commitment they made under the Paris agreement with the Europeans,” McClellan said.
“And we have made it very clear that Iran has a history of hiding their nuclear activities from the international community. That is why it is so important that you have some confidence building measures, or objective guarantees, in place so that they show the international community that their nuclear program is not being used to develop weapons… under the cover of a civilian program,” McClellan added.
