The council had set an April 28 deadline for Iran to suspend “all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities, including research and development.” The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) released a report that day saying Tehran defied that demand and has not allowed sufficient “transparency” for UN “inspectors.”

Uranium enrichment, a process necessary for producing fuel for nuclear energy, is also used in the production of nuclear weapons. Washington, its imperialist allies in Europe, and Moscow have pressured Tehran to give up its pursuit of that technology purportedly to prevent Tehran from developing nuclear arms.

The Iranian government responded to the IAEA report by sending a letter to the agency’s inspector general, Mohammed ElBaradei, offering to allow the agency “unscheduled controls” or unannounced inspections of its nuclear facilities as long as the matter of Iran’s nuclear industry remains under the purview of the IAEA and not the Security Council.

The U.S., British, and French governments have reportedly drafted a joint resolution for the Security Council under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. Such resolutions are enforceable through economic and other sanctions and/or military action.

“Everybody agrees on one goal: we cannot allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon or a program to develop nuclear defense,” French foreign ministry spokesman Jean-Baptiste Mattei told Bloomberg News May 2.

“We have a lot of diplomatic arrows in our quiver at the Security Council,” said U.S. secretary of state Condoleezza Rice April 30 on CBS TV’s “Face the Nation.” But if Washington is unsuccessful in getting its way in the UN, Rice added, there are “also like-minded states that might be willing to look at additional measures if the Security Council does not seem to be enough.”

Moscow and Beijing have spoken against applying economic sanctions at this time but have not said whether they would vote in favor of a binding Chapter 7 resolution. The Russian government voted to refer the matter to the Security Council, while the Chinese government abstained, allowing the move to proceed to this point.

Washington, Paris, London, Berlin, and Moscow have all joined in pressuring Tehran to forfeit its right to produce nuclear fuel, which is codified in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Instead, these governments demand that Tehran depend on imported fuel.

“The Iranian nation considers it an absolute right to benefit from all the technologies of the day, including nuclear technology, for entirely peaceful purposes, and insists on materializing that right,” Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said April 28, according to the Islamic Republic News Agency.
 
 
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