The UK is working hard both with France and Germany (as the "EU3") and in the UN Security Council to persuade Iran to co-operate fully with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and take steps that would assure the international community that its nuclear programme is exclusively for peaceful purposes. 

 

On Saturday 14 June, Secretary-General of the Council of the European Union Javier Solana handed over to the Iranian Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki a joint letter signed by the Foreign Ministers of the UK, US, China, France, Germany and Russia. The letter offers to work with Iran on a modern nuclear energy programme, with a guaranteed fuel supply, and to discuss political and economic issues, as well as issues regarding regional security, as soon as Iran’s enrichment-related and reprocessing activities are suspended.

 

The Security Council has adopted four resolutions demanding that Iran suspend all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities, and has imposed incremental sanctions on the individuals and entities involved in Iran's nuclear programme. At the same time, the UK and the Security Council have made clear that they will ease or end sanctions if Iran takes the steps necessary to restore confidence in its intentions: suspend uranium enrichment, co-operate with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and put in place safeguards so that the IAEA can ensure that Iran’s programme is purely for peaceful purposes.

 

Most recent

 

The most recent step taken by the Security Council was the adoption on 3 March of UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1803, which:

• strengthened the restrictions on individuals and entities closely associated with Iran's proliferation sensitive nuclear activities and with its ballistic missile programme;
• increased vigilance over the activities of Iranian banks, particularly Banks Melli and Saderat which we believe are engaged in proliferation sensitive activities;
• introduced a provision for careful scrutiny of new commitments for export credits to Iran;
• and encouraged Member States to inspect cargo to and from Iran where there are grounds to believe prohibited items are being transported.
  

Background

In 2003, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna found that Iran had been developing a clandestine nuclear programme for 18 years, in breach of its obligations to the IAEA as a signatory to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Iran has claimed that its nuclear activities are for the production of a civil power generation programme, but the international community shares concerns that the same technology could be used to produce nuclear weapons. Why, for example, is Iran pursuing some technologies that are only used for detonating nuclear bombs? Why is it experimenting with plutonium 210? Why is it enriching uranium when it does not have any power plants that require enriched uranium? This technology only makes sense in the context of a nuclear weapons programme.

On 4 February 2006, the IAEA Board reported the issue to the UN Security Council in its resolution GOV/2006/14. In a Presidential Statement on 29 March 2006, the Security Council called on Iran, among other things, to re-suspend its sensitive nuclear activities. 

In early June, the EU's High Representative, Javier Solana, presented Iran with a set of far-reaching proposals as a basis for discussion. That offer was to support international joint nuclear power projects in Iran, to guarantee fuel, to improve Iran's access to the international economy, and to establish long-term co-operation in other areas like civil aviation, telecommunications and agriculture.

Five weeks after presenting the proposals to Iran, the Foreign Ministers of China, France, Germany, Russia, the UK and the US issued a joint statement on 12 July 2006, stating they were profoundly disappointed that Iran had shown no indication it was ready to engage seriously on the proposals, and that Iran had failed to take the steps needed to allow negotiations to begin. The Ministers said they had no choice but to return the matter to the UN Security Council.

On 31 July, the Security Council adopted resolution 1696 (2006) , which, among other things, made suspension of enrichment-related and reprocessing activities a mandatory obligation on Iran. On 22 August, the Government of Iran gave a formal response to the proposals offered by the group of six countries but failed to address the key requirement to suspend sensitive nuclear activities. As a result the Council unanimously adopted resolution 1737 (2006) . Among other things, the resolution reinforced and expanded the mandatory suspension by Iran of sensitive nuclear technologies. The resolution further imposed a range of sanctions measures targeted at Iran's proliferation sensitive nuclear and missile programmes. In the face of continued non-compliance from Iran, the Security Council adopted resolution 1747 (2007) on 24 March 2007, which imposed further sanctions against Iran as a means of persuading the Government of Iran to return to a suspension of its sensitive nuclear activities and thereby to facilitate negotiations. Iran has continued to refuse to fulfil its legal obligations to suspend uranium enrichment, answer the many outstanding questions about its nuclear programme, and co-operate with the IAEA. As a result the Security Council adopted on 3 March 2008 resolution 1803, which applied another increment of pressure on the Iranian elite by: strengthening the restrictions on individuals and entities closely associated with Iran's proliferation sensitive nuclear activities and with its ballistic missile programme; increasing vigilance over the activities of Iranian banks, particularly Banks Melli and Saderat which we believe are engaged in proliferation sensitive activities; introducing a provision for careful scrutiny of new commitments for export credits to Iran; and encouraging Member States to inspect cargo to and from Iran where there are grounds to believe prohibited items are being transported.