Iran: Attack fears spurred nuclear block

Iran, in a confidential letter posted on Mar. 30 on an internal website of the UN nuclear monitor, said its fear of attack from the US and Israel prompted its decision to withhold information from the agency. In the letter, Iran said the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had repeatedly allowed confidential information crucial to the country's security to be leaked. On Mar. 25, Iran said it would no longer provide the IAEA with advance notice about any new nuclear facilities planned–a decision the government spokesman Gholan Hossein Elham said came in response to the "illegal and bullying resolution by [the] Security Council." Expanding on the decision, the confidential letter, dated Mar. 29, declared that "the United States and the Israeli regime… are threatening the use of force and attack against the Islamic Republic of Iran and have repeatedly stressed that military action is an option on the table. "So long as such threats of military action persist, Iran has no option but [to] protect its security through all means possible, including protection of information which can facilitate openly stated and aggressive military objectives of the warmongers," said the letter, signed by Ali Ashgar Soltanieh, Iran's chief delegate to the IAEA. Blaming the IAEA for failing "systematically and repeatedly to maintain confidentiality of sensitive information," Soltanieh wrote that "therefore such dangerous dissemination of sensitive information will have to be curtailed through steps which limit their scope and availability."