UN watchdog to issue Iran nuke report today

Iran has made clear that it intends to pursue uranium enrichment which it began earlier this year. Enrichment makes fuel for nuclear power reactors but can also produce the raw material for atom bombs.

"Production of nuclear fuel is one of Iran's strategic objectives," Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani said Sunday. "Any action to limit or deprive Iran could not force Iran to give up this goal."

The UN Security Council has demanded that Iran suspend all uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities by August 31, amid US-led concerns that Tehran's nuclear programme is a cover for an attempt to produce an atomic bomb.

Six world powers have also proposed talks on Iran receiving trade, technology and security benefits if it suspends enrichment.

The Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is to verify whether Tehran has complied with Security Council deadline.

It is all but certain that Iran is continuing enrichment activities but there could be a hitch, diplomats said.

Russia and China already resist sanctions and their reluctance could be strengthened if it turns out that Iran is at this point not actually enriching uranium but only working with "dry running" the centrifuge machines which carry out the process.

The reason could be simple: while Iran enriched a small amount of uranium in April it has since then had technical problems as it must first master the process of running cascades of centrifuges, with each machine spinning uranium gas at supersonic speeds.

The tall, tube-like centrifuges break down easily.

"I hear that the attrition rate on their centrifuge machines is very high," said Gary Samore, a non-proliferation expert who worked in former President Bill Clinton's administration and is now at the MacArthur Foundation in Chicago.

While some diplomats have said spinning centrifuges dry, with inert gas for example, could be a compromise on suspension, US officials have said that even running the machines without uranium gas would help Iran move towards the so-called "break-out capacity" of having the technology needed to make nuclear weapons.