IAEA renews pressure on Iran after ‘terrorists’ charge

IAEA renews pressure on Iran after ‘terrorists’ charge

The U.N. nuclear agency said on Tuesday that Iran must address concerns about its suspected atom bomb research, one day after Tehran alleged that „terrorists” had infiltrated the organization to sabotage the Islamic Republic’s uranium enrichment plants.

Britain added to the pressure on Iran before talks later on Tuesday between the European Union’s foreign policy chief and Iran’s nuclear negotiator, saying Western nations would step up sanctions against Tehran if negotiations failed.

„We will be intensifying those sanctions in the coming weeks and months in the absence of successful negotiations,” British Foreign Secretary William Hague said in London.

But he also made clear the West’s opposition to Israeli strikes on Iran, saying Britain’s advice to Israel „has been very clear, that in these circumstances … we are not in favor of a military strike on Iran.”

Meanwhile, the U.S. and its allies are currently conducting a large-scale naval exercise in the Persian Gulf. The exercise, focused mainly on mine-clearing operations, began on Monday. The exercise was designed to train for a scenario in which Iran decides to close the Strait of Hormuz, a major international shipping lane for oil produced in the Persian Gulf region.

Iran has threatened a number of times in the past to close the Strait of Hormuz in response to military action against its nuclear sites.

In response to these threats, the U.S. and Britain organized the naval exercise, the largest in the history of the Persian Gulf. The exercise will continue for 12 days and 25 countries will participate in it, including Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states.

Among other possible eventualities, the exercise will deal with a scenario in which the Iranians place mines in the Strait of Hormuz to block maritime traffic in the area. Iran sent a submarine and a destroyer earlier this week to the area of the Persian Gulf where the exercise is being held.

On Tuesday evening, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton met with Iranian nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili in Istanbul in their first face-to-face meeting since June. The meeting was held behind closed doors and no statements were released, according to AFP.

Separate efforts by the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency to unblock its investigation into possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear program also appear deadlocked despite a series of meetings since January.

IAEA Director-General Yukiya Amano told Iranian nuclear energy chief Fereydoun Abbasi that it was essential for Iran to cooperate with his inspectors to help allay their concerns.

They met on Monday just hours after Abbasi sharply criticized the U.N. body in a speech to its 155-nation annual assembly in Vienna.

Amano told Abbasi the IAEA „is committed to continued dialogue … and expressed the readiness of agency negotiators to meet with Iran’s in the near future,” a statement said.

In a sign of the depth of mistrust between Iran and the IAEA, Abbasi accused the U.N. agency of a „cynical approach” and mismanagement in his speech on Monday.

He said „terrorists and saboteurs” might have infiltrated the IAEA in an effort to derail his nation’s atomic program. It was Tehran’s harshest attack on the integrity of the U.N. organization and its investigation of allegations that Iran is striving to make nuclear arms.

Revealing what he said were two sabotage attempts on his country’s nuclear program, he challenged the perpetrators to launch new attacks, saying his country is determined to learn how to protect its interests through such assaults.

„Terrorists and saboteurs might have intruded the agency and might be making decisions covertly,” he said. Citing what he said was an example of sabotage on Aug. 17 at the Fordo underground enrichment plant, he said IAEA inspectors arrived to inspect it shortly after power lines were blown up.

„Does this visit have any connection to that detonation?” he asked.

It appeared to be the first mention of the alleged sabotage attack. The plant at Fordo, about 70 kilometers (40 miles) south of Tehran, is of particular concern to Israel because it is buried deep in a mountainside to protect it from assault. It also is being used to enrich uranium closer to the level needed for a nuclear warhead than what is used to power most industrial reactors, although Iran says it needs the higher level both because its present research reactor runs on the higher-grade material and because it plans to build more such reactors.

Asked by reporters to expand on the alleged sabotage attempt, Abbasi said it was foiled „by using backup batteries and diesel generators” that prevented any disruption to centrifuges used to spin uranium to enriched levels.

He also said a separate attack on the country’s centrifuges — through tiny explosions meant to disable key parts of the machines — was discovered before the timed blasts could go off. Abbasi did not elaborate on the date or other details of that alleged assault attempt.

„We are a powerful country. We can confront any kind of industrial espionage whether it is an explosive or a virus,” Abbasi said. „We are eager and interested to ask the other side to have more (attacks) because having more we would be more experienced.”

Inside the IAEA meeting, he said Iran now can „ward off threats by targeting … cyberattacks, industrial sabotage and use of explosives,” without elaborating.

Beyond suggesting that the IAEA had been infiltrated, Abbasi said that anti-Iran elements are helped by the agency, even when it reports what it sees „truthfully and with absolute honesty,” because „this information is easily accessible to saboteurs and terrorists through IAEA reports.”

He also said U.S. pressure on Iran is the equivalent of an attack on all developing nations’ nuclear rights. He called U.S.-led sanctions on Iran’s oil exports and financial transactions „the ugly face of colonization and modern slavery.”

„A state which has used nuclear weapons is not eligible to be present at the Board of Governors,” he said, questioning the right of the United States to sit on the 35-nation IAEA board that makes agency policy.

Western diplomats dismissed the Iranian allegations against the IAEA as an attempt to divert attention from Tehran’s stonewalling of the agency’s inquiry.

„Iran’s accusations against the IAEA are a new low. Increasingly cornered, they are lashing out wildly,” said nuclear proliferation expert Mark Fitzpatrick of the International Institute for Strategic Studies think-tank.

In a development that diplomats said showed how enforcement of U.N. sanctions against Tehran is steadily improving, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates have confiscated a number of items Iran may have sought for its nuclear program.

One of the items heading to Iran but confiscated by Bahrain was carbon fiber, the diplomats told Reuters, a dual-use material U.N. experts have said would be crucial if Iran was to develop more advanced nuclear-enrichment centrifuge technology.

Bahrain’s and UAE’s confidential reports to the U.N. Security Council’s Iran sanctions committee are politically significant, envoys said on condition of anonymity, since they highlight how more and more states are enforcing the sanctions and making it increasingly difficult for Tehran to flout them.

„The fact that these two countries are now taking steps to enforce the sanctions and reporting those steps to the U.N. is remarkable by itself,” a senior Security Council diplomat told Reuters. „It shows that the U.N. sanctions regime can work. UAE has been one of Iran’s enablers. Iran’s becoming more isolated.”

Report: US likely created computer viruses for espionage, warfare

Researchers have found evidence suggesting that the United States may have developed three previously unknown computer viruses for use in espionage operations or cyberwarfare.

The findings are likely to bolster a growing view that the U.S. government is using cyber technology more widely than previously believed to further its interests in the Middle East. The United States has already been linked to the Stuxnet Trojan that attacked Iran’s nuclear program in 2010 and the sophisticated Flame cyber surveillance tool that was uncovered in May.

Antivirus software makers Symantec Corp. of the United States and Kaspersky Lab of Russia disclosed on Monday that they have found evidence that Flame’s operators may have also worked with three other viruses that have yet to be discovered.

The two security firms, which conducted their analyses separately, declined to comment on who was behind Flame. But current and former Western national security officials have told Reuters that the United States played a role in creating Flame. The Washington Post has reported that Israel was also involved.

For now, the two firms know very little about the newly identified viruses, except that one of them is currently deployed in the Middle East. They are not sure what the malicious software was designed to do. „It could be anything,” said Costin Raiu, director of Kaspersky Lab’s Global Research and Analysis Team.

Kaspersky and Symantec released their findings in reports describing analysis of „command and control” servers used to communicate with and control computers infected with Flame.

About a dozen computers in Iran and Lebanon that are infected with one of the newly identified pieces of malware are trying to communicate with command and control servers, according to Kaspersky Lab.

The researchers found a large cache of data on one of the command and control servers, but cannot analyze it because it is encrypted using a password that they said would be virtually impossible to crack.

They believe that it was encrypted so heavily because the people coordinating the attack did not want the workers using the program to be able to read potentially sensitive information.

„This approach to uploading packages and downloading data fits the profile of military and/or intelligence operations,” Symantec said in its report.

‘U.S. will go to war with Iran in 2013’

Meanwhile, Martin Indyk, the former ambassador to Israel, warned on Sunday that the United States could go to war with Iran as early as next year, in an interview with CBS News’ “Face the Nation.”

Indyk, who currently serves as director for foreign policy at the Brookings Institution, told CBS News, „I’m afraid that 2013 is going to be a year in which we’re going to have a military confrontation with Iran.”

Despite Israel’s hard-line stance on Iran, Indyk said it was not time yet for the U.S. to launch an attack against Iranian nuclear facilities.

“Iran doesn’t have a nuclear weapon,” the former ambassador told CBS News. “While there’s still time, there’s not a lot of time.”