The UN nuclear watchdog's mixed assessment on Iran's disputed nuclear activities suggests Tehran is willing to do only just enough to stave off further UN sanctions, analysts said Friday.
"Iran has again provided just enough cooperation to try to buy a further reprieve from an additional Security Council resolution," said Mark Fitzpatrick, an expert on non-proliferation at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.
"It certainly is not enough for the US and Europe, for whom Iran's ongoing current activity is more problematic than the lingering questions about the past," Fitzpatrick told AFP.
"However, the level of cooperation Iran showed may be enough for Russia and China."
While the United States has vowed in the wake of the report to press ahead with its drive for additional sanctions, China and Russia, who are also permanent members of the UN Security Council, are reluctant to back such a motion.
In fact, according to the Iran's official news agency IRNA on Friday, Russia has informed the IAEA that it is poised to deliver the first consignment of fuel for a nuclear power plant under construction at Bushehr on Iran's Gulf coast.
Simon Barrett, director and Iran expert at the London-based think tank, International Media Intelligence Analysis (IMIA), also believed that Iran was "simply buying time."
Tehran "wants to prove they're cooperating with the UN, while at the same time expanding their enrichment activities. That brings them closer to the nuclear bomb."
An official close to the IAEA said the watchdog's inspectors had been able to confirm for the first time Iran's claim that it had 3,000 centrifuges enriching uranium.
That is the number scientists believe is sufficient, in ideal conditions, to produce enough enriched uranium in one year to make a single nuclear bomb.
In the report sent to its 35-member board on Thursday, the IAEA found that Iran had taken important strides in revealing the extent of its nuclear programme.
But it was still defying UN demands that it suspend uranium enrichment and had also refused to sign the so-called Additional Protocol, a key document allowing unrestricted inspections.
That made it difficult for IAEA inspectors to be certain there were no undeclared nuclear activities in Iran, the report complained.
Indeed, the agency's knowledge of Iran's current nuclear activities was "diminishing", the report warned.
Trying to extract information from Iran was like trying to crack a nut, an IAEA official said.
"You have to ask for the precise piece of information to get at it. It's not thrown at you," he said.
The United States, which has long been pushing for further sanctions against Tehran, said the findings proved that Iran was just "stringing the IAEA along."
In a telephone interview with AFP, the US ambassador to the IAEA, Gregory Schulte, said: "Maybe they've shed some additional light on activities in the 80s and 90s, but we know less and less about what they're doing in 2007."
Like every other country, Iran had "an obligation to cooperate with the IAEA. They don't have the right to make that obligation conditional," Schulte said.
The next step to further sanctions will come later this month with a second report by EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana.
If Solana's report finds that Iran is not cooperating sufficiently, the UN Security Council could vote for additional sanctions.
Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Washington-based Arms Control Association, also believed that sanctions alone were not the answer.
"The US and other states must recognise that sanctions alone will not convince Iran to comply or suspend its programme," he told AFP.
"Such pressure must be accompanied by direct engagement on a broad range of issues if a resolution to the crisis is to be achieved any time soon."
Kimball acknowledged that while the report showed progress in some important areas, "troubling questions" remained.
"From this point forward, it is vital that Iran accelerate and enhance its cooperation with the IAEA to address the other issues in the workplan and agree to abide by the Additional Protocol in order to diminish concern and suspicion about the purpose of its enrichment and heavy water reactor projects," Kimball said.
