The new report issued by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has led to an Iranian claim of vindication and an American assessment that new sanctions are warranted. The long-awaited report said that Iran had cooperated in clearing up some outstanding issues that related to the possibility that it was seeking to create nuclear weapons. That finding led Iranian U.N. Ambassador Mohammad Khazee to declare that "the allegations raised by a few powers against the peaceful nuclear program of the Islamic Republic of Iran have been entirely groundless." Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadi Nejad went even farther, calling for an apology and compensation from the United States and those nations that joined with the U.S. in accusing Iran of intending to make nuclear weapons. But the IAEA report also said that Iran "has not suspended its enrichment-related activities… [and has] started the development of new-generation centrifuges and continues to work on heavy water nuclear facilities," the end result conceivably being the creation of enough plutonium to use as a fissile payload in nuclear weapons. This finding prompted American U.N. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad to suggest the report provided enough proof to continue the push for a third round of sanctions against Iran because, "Things are getting worse in terms of the enrichment part [of the report]."
