Iran senses victory in nuclear battle

The European Union, fearful that Iran's atomic fuel work could be diverted to make nuclear weapons, failed to win a consensus among International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) member states for its bid to refer Tehran to the UN Security Council.

Even a softened EU draft resolution, which still finds Iran in non-compliance with nuclear proliferation safeguards, has met with tough opposition from Russia -- leaving Iran feeling justified in its defiant stance.

"The retreat of the Europeans over the Security Council is explained by Iran's firm position, the fact that the European demand had no logical basis and the objections of countries like Russia, China and non-aligned states," national security spokesman Ali Agha Mohammadi told AFP.

The stand-off deepened in August after Iran rejected demands from Britain, France, Germany that it abandon its enrichment programme in exchange for incentives and ended a freeze on enrichment-related work by resuming uranium conversion.

Conversion is the first step in making enriched uranium, which can be fuel for nuclear power reactors or the raw material for atom bombs -- but Iran says its ambitions are strictly peaceful and such work is the right of any signatory of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

In seeking to preserve that "right", Iran's new hardline government has been distancing itself from the West and trying to marginalise Britain, France and Germany -- with whom the previous more moderate regime had been dealing with for two years.