VIENNA, Austria — The International Atomic Energy Agency reported Iran to the U.N. Security Council yesterday over fears it wants to produce nuclear arms, raising the stakes in the diplomatic confrontation and prompting Tehran to threaten immediate retaliation.
Of the board’s 35 member nations, 27 voted for referral, reflecting more than two years of intense lobbying by the United States and its allies — and growing concerns about Iran’s true nuclear aims.
President Bush said yesterday’s long-sought vote to send Iran’s nuclear case before the U.N. Security Council sends a clear message.
“The path chosen by Iran’s new leaders — threats, concealment and breaking international agreements and IAEA seals — will not succeed and will not be tolerated by the international community,” Mr. Bush said in a statement the White House issued yesterday at the president’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, where he is spending the weekend.
Washington critics Cuba, Venezuela and Syria voted against referral. Five other nations abstained.
Still, the near consensus came at a price for Washington. Long an advocate of firm Security Council action against Iran, including possible political and economic sanctions, the U.S. had to settle for what is essentially a symbolic referral, for now.
After years of opposition, Russia and China backed the referral last week, bringing support from other nations — including India — that had been waiting for their lead. But in return, Moscow and Beijing demanded that the United States — and France and Britain, the two other veto-wielding Security Council members — agree to let the Iran issue rest until at least March.
That is when the IAEA board meets again to review the agency’s investigation of Iran’s nuclear program and its compliance with board demands that it renounce uranium enrichment. That process can produce either fuel for a nuclear reactor or the material needed to build a warhead.
Iran remained defiant, threatening to do precisely what the referral was meant to prevent. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ordered the resumption of uranium enrichment and an end to snap IAEA inspections of its nuclear facilities, according to state television.
“As of Sunday, the voluntary implementation of the additional protocol and other cooperation beyond the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty has to be suspended under the law,” Mr. Ahmadinejad said in a letter to Vice President Gholamreza Aghazadeh, who also is the head of the nation’s nuclear agency.
Javed Vaeidi, deputy head of Iran’s powerful National Security Council, also said his country “now has to implement fuller scale of enrichment.”
Iran says it wants to enrich only to make nuclear fuel for generating electricity, but concerns that it might misuse the technology accelerated the chain of events that led to yesterday’s referral to the Security Council. Tehran took IAEA seals off enrichment equipment Jan. 10 and said it would resume small-scale activities.
Mr. Vaeidi also said a proposal to enrich Iranian uranium in Russia was dead.
Moscow has suggested that Iran shift its plan for large-scale enrichment of uranium to Russian territory to alleviate international concern Iran might use the process to develop an atomic bomb.
Other Iranian comments reflected Tehran’s fury at Washington. The Islamic Republic News Agency quoted Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar describing U.S. leaders as “terrorists and the main axis of evil in the world.”
Mr. Najjar was responding to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who at a high-level security conference in Munich repeated Washington’s view of Iran as the “world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism.”
European leaders expressed support for the referral, through a resolution drafted by France, Britain and Germany on behalf of the European Union.
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said the vote showed “the international community’s determination to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons in the Middle East.”
EU foreign-policy chief Javier Solana said through a spokesman that he hoped the vote would send “a clear signal to Iran that it must comply with the demands of the international community.”
Russia’s government urged Iran to “respond constructively” to the IAEA’s decision, “including the restoration of a voluntary moratorium on all uranium-enrichment works.”
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