UN watchdog holds nuclear talks in Iran

“It is clear that for years Iran has had Shihab-3 ballistic missiles which put Israel within its reach. But the threat posed by Iran comes from its nuclear programme and not from its satellites or ballistic missiles.”
Israel and its staunch ally the United States have never ruled out a military strike against Iran’s nuclear sites, although currently Washington has said that for the moment it is pursuing the diplomatic option.
Iran risks a possible fourth round of UN sanctions after it failed to give a clear response to an incentives package offered by six major world powers in return for halting uranium enrichment, a process which makes nuclear fuel but also the core of an atomic bomb. Heinonen, who is in Tehran at the invitation of the country’s atomic energy organisation, is accompanied by another unnamed IAEA expert, IRNA said.
Since April, his visits have focused on studies the IAEA suspects Iran has carried out in the past into the engineering involved in making a nuclear warhead.
In his last report on Iran in May, IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei accused Tehran of withholding key information on the so-called weaponisation studies.
Iran dismissed the allegations as “baseless”, insisting it had provided a comprehensive response.
ElBaradei is due to submit another report on Iran’s nuclear programme and its cooperation with the IAEA in mid-September, before the next meeting of the agency’s board of governors.
Tehran has already been slapped with three sets of UN sanctions over its failure to heed successive Security Council ultimatums to freeze uranium enrichment.
Iran has said it was ready to hold more talks with the European Union on the package offered by Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States.
The leading OPEC member, which is the world’s fourth oil producer, insists however that its nuclear programme is aimed solely at generating energy for its growing population