U.N. Report: Iran Isn't Cooperating

Iran is still enriching uranium, the International Atomic Energy Agency said Thursday, in a report that opens the way for U.N. Security Council sanctions against Tehran.

"Iran has not suspended its enrichment activities," said the report. It also said that three years of IAEA probing still has not been able to confirm "the peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear program because of lack of cooperation from Tehran."

The fear is that Iran is developing weapons grade uranium to use in the weapons systems it is also developing, reports CBS News correspondent Mark Phillips.

"Apart from a few very sophisticated uses for uranium metal by the most advanced nuclear programs in the world, the only real use for uranium metal is a nuclear weapon," U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton said after the report was released.

Also Thursday, President Bush said "there must be consequences" for Tehran.

The president said the violence in Lebanon this summer makes Tehran's designs on the world stage clear. He blamed Iran for supporting the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, for helping to destabilize Iraq by sponsoring insurgents and supplying components for improvised explosive devices, and for denying basic human rights to millions of its own people.

"The world now faces a grave threat from the radical regime in Iran," the president said. "We know the depth of suffering that Iran's sponsorship of terrorists has brought. And we can imagine how much worse it would be if Iran were allowed to acquire nuclear weapons."

Whatever action the United Nations takes, it won't be until next month. A senior U.N. diplomat says key European nations will meet with Iran next month in a last-ditch effort to seek a negotiated solution to the standoff.

The diplomat, who demanded anonymity because his information was confidential, said the Security Council will await the results of that meeting before considering sanctions.

Earlier in the day, Iran's president defiantly refused to compromise as a U.N. deadline for his country to stop enriching uranium arrived Thursday, saying Tehran would not be bullied into giving up its right to nuclear technology.

"The Iranian nation will not accept for one moment any bullying, invasion and violation of its rights," President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told a crowd of thousands in the northwestern city of Orumiyeh.

He also said enemies of the country were trying to stir up differences among the Iranian people, but "I tell them: you are wrong. The Iranian nation is united."

"They claim to be supporting freedom but they support the most tyrannical governments in the world to pursue their own interests," he said, referring to the United States. "They talk about human rights while maintaining the most notorious prisons. Those powers that do not abide by God and follow evil are the main source of all the current problems of mankind."

Obtained by The Associated Press, the restricted report did not specifically say that Iran was carrying out enrichment work on Thursday, the last day of a Security Council deadline for it to cease the activity, saying only that it started work on a new batch on Aug. 24.

But a senior official close to the agency said centrifuges were processing uranium gas for enrichment as late as Tuesday, the last day that IAEA inspectors reported back to headquarters on Tehran's nuclear program.

The IAEA report shows a continuing pattern of a lack of cooperation by Iran, obstructionism by Iran, of not allowing the IAEA inspectors to do the basic work that they need to do," Bolton said.

Iran says it wants to develop a full-scale enrichment program to generate electricity, but there is growing suspicion the oil-rich country wants to misuse enrichment to create fissile material for nuclear warheads.

Iran could, in theory at least, could still announce an enrichment freeze in the few hours remaining before Thursday's Security Council deadline expires. But that appeared unlikely, considering Tehran's past refusal to consider such a move, the report's findings and the comments by the official, who demanded anonymity because his information was confidential.

The rest of the report essentially documented a months-long stalemate between agency inspectors trying to determine if Tehran is seeking to make weapons as well as repeated instances of Iranian officials refusing to provide information sought by IAEA experts.

While the findings on enrichment were expected they were important because they provided the formal trigger needed for the Security Council to act.

Security Council members had the report a few minutes after it was formally issued. IAEA officials said the six-page report was hand-carried to Security Council chambers at the same time that it was posted on the agency's intranet for the IAEA's 35 board-member nations.

With the report in hand, the Security Council could begin to actively consider economic and political sanctions because it had asked the agency to report on Tehran's compliance with meeting the Aug. 31 deadline to freeze enrichment.

Still, sanctions will not come immediately, with the council having the option of putting off active consideration until the IAEA board formally reviews the report in mid-September. As well, permanent council members Russia and China are likely to resist U.S.-led efforts for a quick response. Negotiations over earlier Iran motions took weeks.

Other key findings in the report from IAEA chief Mohamed ElBarade included:

• New findings of minute particles of highly enriched uranium at a technical university implicated in possible military work, although the report did not specify whether the level was weapons grade
• A decision by the Iranians to no longer allow IAEA access to suspicious diagrams in their possession apparently showing how to mold fissile material into the shape of a warhead and to destroy notes taken on the document by agency inspectors
• Other restrictions on the IAEA, including a temporary decision to prevent IAEA inspections of an underground facility being built to house tens of thousands of centrifuges — the mainstay of Iran's future enrichment program, and protracted delays in granting inspectors multiple entry visas.

"There must be consequences for Iran's defiance," he said, "and we must not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapons."