(...)
What has Iran said?

President Ahmadinejad said: "We have no secrecy." He said the facility was open for inspection by the IAEA and was 18 months away from completion. Iran acknowledged the plant in a letter to the IAEA four days before Mr Obama's announcement. It told the IAEA that the project was a pilot and would enrich uranium only to low levels. It later said there were no other plants.

Did Iran violate IAEA rules in not declaring this plant earlier?

President Ahmadinejad said it was being built in conformity with IAEA rules and that Iran had given much more notice of it than required.

However, there is a dispute between Iran and the IAEA over the notice that has to be given before a nuclear facility is made operational. Iran says that, under its safeguards agreement with the IAEA, it need only declare a facility 180 days before nuclear material is inserted into it and that in this case it had given about a year's notice.

However, the IAEA says that in 2003, after the main enrichment plant at Natanz was discovered, Iran agreed on what's called a Subsidiary Arrangement to its safeguards agreement, under which it would inform the IAEA of any new facility at the preliminary design stage. Iran later repudiated this arrangement, saying that it had not been ratified by its parliament but the IAEA says that no such unilateral repudiation is allowed.

So Western governments argue that Iran did violate the rules. The IAEA agrees. (...)

Why is Iran refusing to obey the Security Council resolutions?

Under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), a signatory state has the right to enrich uranium to be used as fuel for civil nuclear power. Such states have to remain under inspection from the IAEA. Iran is under such inspection. However, only those signatory states with nuclear weapons at the time of the treaty in 1968 are allowed to enrich to the much higher level needed for a nuclear weapon.

Iran says it is simply doing what it is allowed to do under the treaty and intends only to enrich to the level needed for nuclear power station fuel. It blames the Security Council resolutions on political pressure from the US and its allies. It argues that it needs nuclear power and wants to control the whole process itself.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has repeatedly stressed that Iran will not yield to international pressure: "The Iranian nation will not succumb to bullying, invasion and the violation of its rights," he has said.

What does Iran say about developing nuclear weapons?

It says it will not break its obligations under the NPT and will not use the technology to make a nuclear bomb.

On 18 September 2009, President Ahmadinejad told NBC News: "We don't need nuclear weapons... it's not a part of our programmes and plans."

He said that nuclear-armed states should themselves give up their nuclear weapons.

Shortly afterwards Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who is reported to have issued a fatwa some time ago against nuclear weapons said: "We fundamentally reject nuclear weapons."(...)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/403...