PARIS — Iran defied the United Nations' nuclear agency on Tuesday, announcing that it had begun converting tons of uranium into gas, a crucial step in making fuel for a nuclear reactor or a nuclear bomb. The International Atomic Energy Agency called on Saturday for Iran to suspend all such activities.
Iran's statement, made in Vienna, Austria, by the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, Gholamreza Aghazadeh, put the country on a collision course with the United States, which has lobbied vigorously for the international nuclear agency to refer Iran's nuclear program to the Security Council for past breaches of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Tuesday's announcement will only add weight to Washington's arguments. On Saturday, the IAEA's 35-nation board of governors passed a resolution calling for Iran to halt all uranium enrichment activities, but it declined to refer the matter to the Security Council. The board meets again on Nov. 25. Should the United States prevail, the Security Council could decide to impose sanctions against the country, issue a warning or take no action at all.
The international nuclear agency's resolutions are not legally binding, and many countries, like Brazil and South Africa, may resist American pressure to sanction Iran for activities that they support: the development of a complete nuclear fuel cycle, from mining uranium ore to reprocessing nuclear waste.
Uranium with a relatively low concentration of the uranium-235 isotope can be used to fuel a nuclear reactor, but the process can easily be extended to produce higher concentrations of the isotope necessary for a nuclear bomb.
The agency had expressed alarm at Iran's earlier announced plans to convert more than 40 tons of uranium oxide, known as yellowcake, into uranium hexafluoride gas.
Iran argues that its uranium enrichment program is intended to produce low-enriched uranium for use in a 1,000-megawatt nuclear power plant that it began constructing in the 1970s. It has offered to accept any safeguards imposed by the nuclear agency to ensure its enrichment activities don't go beyond the 3.5 percent concentration of the uranium-235 isotope needed for its power plant and six others it plans to build.
But the United States and other countries believe the program is part of an effort to develop a nuclear weapon capability. Some American analysts warn that there is only a year or so left to stop Iran from achieving nuclear self-sufficiency. After that, they say, the country will have the means to create a nuclear arsenal without outside help, forever altering the Middle East balance of power.