VIENNA – A senior U.N. nuclear official said Sunday he hopes for progress in upcoming talks with Iran about suspected secret work on atomic arms, but his careful choice of words suggested little expectation that the meeting will be successful.

The comments by Herman Nackaerts as his International Atomic Energy Agency team prepared to leave for Tehran for the second time in less than a month appeared to reflect IAEA reluctance to raise hopes that Iran will engage on an issue that it claims has no substance.

Before the trip, senior diplomats said Russia and China — strategic and economic partners which Iran traditionally relies on to blunt Western pressure over its nuclear activities — were urging Tehran to cooperate with the IAEA team.

Moscow and Beijing are “using some pretty high-level diplomacy” to persuade Iran, one of the diplomats said.

Still, hopes were slim. A previous IAEA mission returned from Tehran on Feb. 1 without managing to dent Iran’s wall of denial. In comments to reporters at the Vienna airport, Nackaerts was at pains to avoid raising hopes.

“We hope that we can have some concrete results after this trip, and the highest priority remains, of course, the possible military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear program,” Nackaerts said. “This is, of course, a very complex issue that may take a while, but we hope it will be constructive.”

Iran has refused to discuss the alleged weapons experiments for nearly four years, saying they are based on “fabricated documents” provided by a “few arrogant countries” — a phrase authorities in Iran often use to refer to the United States and its allies.

Faced with Iranian denial, the IAEA summarized its body of information in November in a 13-page document drawing on 1,000 pages of intelligence. It said then for the first time that some of the alleged experiments can have no other purpose than developing nuclear weapons.

The IAEA team wants to talk to key Iranian scientists suspected of working on a weapons program. They also hope to break down opposition to their plans to inspect documents related to nuclear work and secure commitments from Iranian authorities to allow future visits.

But before the trip, senior diplomats said Iran had made no commitments — despite the Russian and Chinese attempts at persuasion and a rapidly growing series of international sanctions threatening to choke Iran’s oil lifeline and financial system.

 

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