The U.N. atomic watchdog's No. 2 official goes to Iran to test Tehran's latest promise to answer questions about its nuclear agenda under the threat of stiffer sanctions. Iran's gesture of an action plan to address suspicions its nuclear program has military goals, combined with a slowdown in uranium enrichment, have raised the hope of defusing a standoff with big powers. But the United States and EU allies wonder whether Iran's offer of transparency is more than a time-buying gambit designed to avert further sanctions against what Western powers suspect is a bomb making program in disguise.
Iran says it is refining uranium only to generate more electricity and allow it to export more of its bountiful oil. Olli Heinonen, deputy director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, goes to Tehran at its invitation for two days of talks where he will expect Iran to start fleshing out its action plan for answering the Vienna-based IAEA's questions. It wants to know more about experiments with plutonium, the status of research into an advanced centrifuge able to enrich uranium three times as fast as the model Iran now uses, and documents showing how to cast uranium metal for a bomb core.
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