Iran bars 38 U.N. nuclear inspectors
Iran has barred entry to 38 inspectors from the watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency after hardliners demanded retaliation for U.N. sanctions imposed on Tehran last month, officials said on Monday.The IAEA confirmed Iranian word of the ban but said this would not handicap its monitoring of a plant where Iran plans soon to expand from experimental into industrial-scale output of nuclear fuel in defiance of a U.N. Security Council resolution.
Iran’s ISNA news agency said the move was a “first step” in limiting cooperation with the IAEA in line with a demand made by the hardline parliament after the Council agreed the sanctions.
While certainly a troubling development, this is more a diplomatic game than anything signifigant at this point. Still, it is a strong indication that Iran plans to continue it’s current course, something that recent criticisms of Ahmadjinahad’s handling of the situation had called into question.
It seems to me that there are two major bodies of thought within Iran’s rulers on how to go about this, one wants confrontation and loud claiming of nuclear weapons as a right due to Iran, the other wants a more conciliatory tone, but not anything that would impede development. Sadly, there doesn’t seem to be a signifigant block that wants to foregoe weapons development, which of course will make preventing that from happening very difficult.
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