Bush’s diplomatic gambit has helped build consensus on how to deal with Iran, but new findings of uranium enrichment at a military site may really increase the pressure
By ELAINE SHANNON
Posted: 3 June 2006
European envoys hope to elicit the regime’s answer before July’s G-8 summit in St. Petersburg, Russia. The Vienna group agreed that if Iran fails to accede to the world’s demands, the matter will return to the Security Council, which would enact unspecified punitive measures.
The unity could crumble if the Vienna group differs on whether Tehran is cooperating. But for now the pressure on Iran from all sides is growing. An International Atomic Energy Agency report on Iran’s activities is expected next week, and Western diplomats tell Time that it will include “potentially incriminating” details about traces of highly enriched uranium found by inspectors recently on equipment at the Lavisan-Shian military site. The find is significant not because of the residue–it isn’t bomb-grade and may have been on the equipment when it was bought from renegade Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan–but because Iran hasn’t explained why such enrichment tools were found at a military facility. Iranian officials still insist their military is not engaged in nuclear work.
With reporting by Andrew Purvis From the Jun. 12, 2006 issue of TIME magazine