Probe of Iran's nuclear program stalls, U.N. report confirms

VIENNA -- A new U.N. report on Iran's nuclear program says that the latest effort to probe allegations of secret work on atomic arms by Tehran has failed to make headway.

Iran and the IAEA agreed in February to a new start to the probe after a decade of deadlock, marked by Tehran's insistence that the allegations were based on falsified intelligence from the United States and arch-foe Israel.

Since then, the U.N. agency has sought information on alleged experiments with detonators that can be used to set off nuclear explosions; separate work on high-explosive charges used in nuclear blasts, and alleged studies on calculating nuclear explosive yields.

The confidential IAEA report, issued Friday, made clear that there has been little progress.

Iran insists that it never worked on such arms.

The report comes two days after diplomats told The Associated Press that the probe was stalled.

Iran's reported refusal to advance the probe will strengthen those in U.S. Congress and elsewhere skeptical of predictions that Hasan Rouhani's assumption of the presidency last year marked a full turn away from confrontation on the nuclear issue.

In July, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., warned that the extension of nuclear talks with Iran, which freed up $2.8 billion in frozen oil export revenues for Tehran, means that more money will be funneled to militants in the Gaza strip.

Iran denies wanting - or ever working on - nuclear arms, and the diplomats said that as of Tuesday evening it had only provided information on the detonators, insisting that they were used only for oil exploration.

While such applications are possible, the agency says that its body of interconnected information suggests that they were being tested for nuclear weapons use.