Leading European nations may call an emergency meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency next week to act against Iran if it resumes some nuclear activities it has suspended, European diplomats said.
The diplomats said most recent signs indicated that Iran would probably act soon on its declaration last week that it would revive the processing of uranium for nuclear reactors. This is a step that Britain, France, Germany and the European Union say would violate a pledge that Iran made last year.
In Tehran, Hasan Rowhani, Iran's top nuclear negotiator, said some uranium reprocessing activities would "definitely" resume, The Associated Press reported. "Continuation of negotiations in their present format is not possible for us," he said.
"There is a lot of pessimism at the moment," a European diplomat said Wednesday, referring to the growing sense that Iran would effectively walk away from talks on its suspected nuclear arms program.
But European and American officials said there was no consensus yet on exactly what to do if Iran started to carry out its threat, converting uranium tetrafluoride to uranium hexafluoride.
The step is a normal part of the process of enriching uranium for use as fuel for nuclear power reactors. But because the West has concluded that Iran has ambitions to become a nuclear arms power, there is a consensus that it wants to proceed to the high level of enrichment necessary to produce weapons-grade material.
Iran confirmed earlier in the week that it had converted 37 tons of uranium ore concentrate into uranium tetrafluoride, and Western experts say it may take only a few weeks to convert that material into uranium hexafluoride, which can then be fed into centrifuges for enrichment.
European diplomats, asking not to be identified because of the sensitive nature of their negotiations with Iran, said the International Atomic Energy Agency might need to act quickly if Iran resumed the conversion, to cut off a process that could be carried out in a short time. A further fear, they said, would be that Iran might proceed with the conversion and then suspend its activities once again, before the international agency acted, thus effectively going one step further down the road before action could be taken against it.
As a result, some thought is being given to whether an emergency session of the atomic energy agency should be sought for next week, giving Iran a warning to rescind its action or face an immediate referral of the issue to the UN Security Council, where sanctions could be considered.
"If we adopt a policy of stop and go, it could bring Iran nearer to what we don't want each time," said a European diplomat. "We don't want to slow down this process. We want to stop it."
The European discussions are being carried out in consultation with top U.S. officials, particularly R. Nicholas Burns, under secretary of state for political affairs. But American officials say they are letting the Europeans decide how to proceed.
Whether to call for an immediate session of the atomic energy agency "is for the Europeans, first and foremost, to determine," Richard Boucher, the State Department spokesman, said Wednesday.
A senior State Department official, amplifying that comment but asking not to be quoted by name, said there was a feeling in the administration "that the Europeans will do the right thing" if Iran walks away from the talks.
European diplomats said that after getting considerable leeway from Washington to discuss economic incentives with Iran as an inducement to ending its nuclear activities, it was inconceivable that the Europeans would not follow through with their promise to take the issue to the United Nations if the talks failed.
"It's a matter of our credibility," a European diplomat said.
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