Iran has not only refused to halt enrichment, it has accelerated its program, testing a new homegrown centrifuge that can enrich uranium two or three times faster than the models it procured from Pakistan's illicit nuclear network, according to U.N. reports.
Although the two previous sanctions resolutions were unanimous, this time Indonesia abstained, arguing that Iran would not stop enrichment but might stop cooperating with U.N. inspectors.
The resolution nearly died in December because of a U.S. intelligence report that seemed to bolster Iran's claims that it was not pursuing a nuclear weapon. But Iran's refusal to answer questions about secret weapon designs and continuation of its enrichment activities brought the council's key members together in support of more sanctions.
The U.S. National Intelligence Estimate released in December concluded that Iran had abandoned its military nuclear program in 2003. But the report also says that it could not determine whether Iran had the capability to make a nuclear weapon in the future, a fact which the U.S. and Europeans built on to win back support from Russia and China.
"The NIE had the effect of getting people to lose their bearings and it took a while for people to understand what the NIE was, and what it wasn't," said Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. But the important conclusion, he said, was that Iran had a nuclear weapons program at one point, and may still have the capability to produce an atomic bomb.
The U.S. declassified information it gave the International Atomic Energy Agency two years ago, and allowed the agency to present the documents to Iran and the IAEA board of governors for the first time in February. Some of the documents were gleaned from a laptop computer the CIA said it had acquired from an Iranian technician. Iran had refused to answer the IAEA's questions based on the documents, calling them "politically motivated" and "baseless."
Olli Heinonen, the IAEA's deputy director general, showed diplomats highlights of the "laptop documents" along with information from other countries and the agency's own investigations about Iran's studies of how to make a nuclear warhead.
The designs, he concluded, had no other use than the development of a nuclear weapon. He also emphasized, according to notes acquired by The Times, that the agency could not conclude whether Iran ever produced weapons, or even if the data on the laptop was genuine.
