Western media reported two weeks ago that Tehran approached the International Atomic Energy Agency with a request to provide assistance for its heavy-water plant, inaugurated in the central Iranian city of Arak in August.
The IAEA Board of Governors' Committee for Technical Assistance discussed this and seven other projects at a session earlier this week. Arak proved the most controversial, and the board decided to put off deliberations on the project "indefinitely."
Western governments suspect the Islamic Republic of seeking to obtain a nuclear bomb, and have been pressuring it to stop uranium enrichment and other related activities.
The UN Security Council is now considering an EU-sponsored draft resolution that would ban the supply of nuclear and missile technology to Iran for its refusal to halt enrichment in exchange for a package of incentives offered by the five permanent council members and Germany.
Iran, which insists its nuclear program is purely civilian, has said it might suspend enrichment temporarily, but not as a precondition for further talks with the West, but that it will never cede to international pressure to stop the activity altogether.
In September, U.S. Ambassador to the IAEA Gregory Schulte sent a letter to the agency's director general, in which he accused Iran of being in breach of international restrictions imposed on its nuclear program.
He expressed concern over Iran's assembly of an additional 164 centrifuges at its Natanz plant and the ongoing construction of the Arak plant, where 120 tons of uranium has been converted into gas, a necessary prerequisite for obtaining plutonium.
The American official said Tehran will be able to obtain enough uranium gas to produce as many as 40 nuclear bombs.
