A secret uranium-enrichment plant is discovered, built in a mountainside on a well-defended military compound outside the city of Qom. … Iran brazens it out, trying to bamboozle inspectors into believing there is nothing more. … To diplomats from America, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China, it is a depressingly familiar tale. … Russia and China, hitherto most reluctant to contemplate stiffer sanctions on Iran for its nuclear defiance, are now wondering what to do next. … Diplomats from the six are to meet in mid-December to start taking stock.
What has changed in the intervening seven years is far from reassuring. Iran is much further on with its enrichment plans. … Inspectors, meanwhile, suspect that Iran may have other secret sites. They have plenty of evidence to suggest that Iran has done warhead development. … But Iran refuses to answer their questions, and now threatens to increase its enrichment effort tenfold. …
The IAEA’s board voted 25-3—crucially, with the support of both Russia and China—to censure Iran for its latest safeguards breaches and to refer the matter, yet again, to the UN Security Council. … The question is whether America’s year of attempted engagement will now make it easier to convince Russia, China and other skeptics of the need for stiffer sanctions. Access the full article>>
