[38] In September 2005, the IAEA Board of Governors, in a rare non-consensus decision with 12 abstentions,[39] recalled a previous Iranian "policy of concealment" regarding its enrichment program[40] and found that Iran had violated its NPT Safeguards Agreement.

For its part in the conflict-ridden Middle East, Israel is a member of the IAEA, but it is not itself a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and is widely believed to currently be the only nuclear-armed state in the region.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, whose revolution displaced the Shah's monarchy in 1979 and ruled the newly established Islamic Republic of Iran until his death in 1989, placed little emphasis on nuclear weapons development because it was viewed as a suspicious Western innovation.

On 18 December 2003, Iran voluntarily signed, but did not ratify or bring into force, an Additional Protocol that allows IAEA inspectors access to individuals, documentation relating to procurement, dual-use equipment, certain military-owned workshops, and research and development locations.

However, "A senior U.N. official who was familiar with the report cautioned against reading too much into the findings of traces of highly enriched uranium and plutonium, saying Iran had explained both and they could plausibly be classified as byproducts of peaceful nuclear activities.

While the IAEA has been unable to verify some "important aspects" regarding the nature and scope of Iran's nuclear work, the agency and Iranian officials agreed on a plan to resolve all outstanding issues, Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei said at the time.

Data regarding the P-2 centrifuge, which Ahmadinejad has claimed will quadruple production of enriched uranium, was provided only several days before the report was published; the IAEA plan to discuss this issue further in December.

The report stated "there remain a number of outstanding issues which give rise to concerns, and which need to be clarified to exclude the existence of possible military dimensions to Iran's nuclear programme."

Harnessing nuclear power costs a fraction of this, considering Iran has abundant supplies of accessible uranium ore.[117] These claims have been echoed by Scott Ritter, the former UN weapons inspector in Iraq.

[123]On 14 November 2004, Iran's chief nuclear negotiator said that his country agreed to voluntarily and temporarily suspend the uranium enrichment program after pressure from the European Union on behalf of the United Kingdom, France and Germany, as a confidence-building measure for a reasonable period of time, with six months mentioned as a reference.

The Europeans, with US agreement, intended to entice Iran into a binding commitment not to develop uranium enrichment capability by offering to provide fuel and other long-term support that would facilitate electricity generation with nuclear energy.

On 21 February 2006, Rooz, a news website run by Iranian exiles (the Fedayeen Khalq [People's Commandos] leftist terrorist group),[128] reported that Hojatoleslam Mohsen Gharavian, a student of Qom's fundamentalist cleric Mesbah Yazdi, spoke about the necessity of using nuclear weapons as a means to retaliate and announced that "based on religious law, everything depends on our purpose".

[131] In May 2006 some members of the Iranian legislature ("Majlis" or Parliament) sent a letter to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan threatening to withdraw from the NPT if Iran's right to peaceful use of nuclear technology under the treaty was not protected.

[134] In February 2010, to refuel the Tehran Research Reactor which produces medical isotopes,[135] Iran began using a single cascade to enrich uranium "up to 19.8%",[136][137] to match the previously foreign supplied fuel.

[191] An intelligence report from an unknown country alleged that rogue employees of Kazakhstan were prepared to sell Iran 1,350 tons of purified uranium ore in violation of UN Security Council sanctions.

In May 2006 Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Liu Jianchao stated "As a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran enjoys the right to peaceful use of nuclear power, but it should also fulfil its corresponding responsibility and commitment".

The report said Iran ending "IAEA containment and surveillance of the nuclear material and all installed cascades at the Fuel Enrichment Plan" might serve as an early warning of Iranian intentions.

[208] Yevgeny Primakov, a former Russian prime minister considered the doyen of Moscow's Middle East experts, said he did "not believe that Iran had made a decision to acquire nuclear weapons.

On 8 May 2006, Former Deputy Commander-in-Chief of British Land Forces, General Sir Hugh Beach, former Cabinet Ministers, scientists and campaigners joined a delegation to Downing Street opposing military intervention in Iran.

The delegation delivered two letters to Prime Minister Tony Blair from 1,800 physicists warning that the military intervention and the use of nuclear weapons would have disastrous consequences for the security of Britain and the rest of world.

"[228] The 2008 Annual Arab Public Opinion Poll, Survey of the Anwar Sadat Chair for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland, College Park conducted in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and the UAE in March 2008 noted the following as a key finding.

Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim-majority nation and a non-permanent member of the U.N. Security Council abstained from a vote in March 2008 on a U.N. resolution to impose a third set of sanctions on Iran.

SFGate.com quoted Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as saying: On 21 April 2006, at a Hamas rally in Damascus, Anwar Raja, the Lebanon-based representative of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a party that achieved 4.25% of the votes and holds 3 out the 132 seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council following the election declared: On 3 May 2006 Iraqi Shia cleric Ayatollah Ahmad Husseini Al Baghdadi, who opposes the presence of US forces in Iraq and is an advocate of violent jihad was interviewed on Syrian TV.

In his interview he said:[235] A declaration signed on 20 June 2006 by the foreign ministers of 56 nations of the 57-member Organisation of the Islamic Conference stated that "the only way to resolve Iran's nuclear issue is to resume negotiations without any preconditions and to enhance co-operation with the involvement of all relevant parties".

Ambassador Javad Zarif qualified the resolution as "arbitrary" and illegal because the NTP protocol explicitly guarantees under international law Iran's right to pursue nuclear activities for peaceful purposes.

In response to today's vote at the UN, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that his country will revise his position vis-à-vis the economic/incentive package offered previously by the G-6 (5 permanent Security council members plus Germany.

[122] On 16 September 2006 in Havana, Cuba, all of the 118 Non-Aligned Movement member countries, at the summit level, declared supporting Iran's nuclear program for civilian purposes in their final written statement.

The report further said that "available information about Iranian activities indicates a maturing offensive program with a rapidly evolving capability that may soon include the ability to deliver these weapons by a variety of means".

[247] A U.S. Central Intelligence Agency report dated January 2001 speculated that Iran had manufactured and stockpiled chemical weapons – including blister, blood, choking, and probably nerve agents, and the bombs and artillery shells to deliver them.

[citation needed] In 2016 Iranian chemists synthesised five Novichok nerve agents, originally developed in the Soviet Union, for analysis and produced detailed mass spectral data which was added to the OPCW Central Analytical Database.