Mail on Sunday February 5, 2006
Defiant Tehran Bans UN Inspectors
THE Iranian nuclear weapons crisis heightened last night amid claims Tehran had vowed to defy the United Nations and start the full-scale enrichment of uranium.
Iran also said it would stop snap UN inspections of its nuclear sites from today, giving it a free hand to develop weapons of mass destruction away from the world's gaze.
'As of Sunday, the co-operation has to be suspended,' President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation.
Western experts believe that, unchecked, Iran could produce nuclear bombs within a few years.
Earlier in the day the International Atomic Energy Agency had voted in Vienna to report Iran to the UN Security Council for a secret nuclear bomb programme even though Tehran denies it has such an agenda. It claims the vote was politically motivated.
Meanwhile, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called the Iranian regime which believes Israel has no right to exist 'the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism'.
Analysts believe it is only a matter of time before the US attacks Iranian nuclear sites if diplomacy fails. 'The US will wipe out the Iranian nuclear plants in about 18 months,' said John Pike of American think-tank GlobalSecurity.org.
America will now push the UN Security Council to put crippling economic sanctions on Iran.
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