Don’t Bomb Iran

Timeline from Guardian

July 1968 Iran joins nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT)

August 2002 The rebel group the National Council for Resistance in Iran reveals the existence of undeclared nuclear sites, including an enrichment plant in Natanz and a heavy-water production plant in Arak. Iran acknowledges existence of sites and asks the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to inspect them

June 2003 The IAEA rebukes Iran for not declaring plant but does not find it in violation of the NPT

October 2003 Iran agrees to suspend uranium enrichment and to allow a regime of unannounced IAEA inspections

September 2005 The IAEA finds Iran in non-compliance with the NPT, because of failure to report its nuclear activities

December 2005 Security council imposes the first set of sanctions on Iran for its refusal to accept a resolution calling for a suspension of enrichment

January 2006 Iran breaks IAEA seals on Natanz plant and other nuclear sites

February 2006 The IAEA reports Iran to the UN security council for non-compliance

December 2006 UN imposes first round of sanctions, resolution 1737, which called on states to block Iran’s import and export of “sensitive nuclear material”

December 2007 A US national intelligence estimate concludes that Iran had stopped its weapons development programme in 2003

September 2009 Barack Obama, Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy announce that their intelligence agencies have found a new Iranian enrichment plant dug into the side of a mountain near Qom, at a site called Fordow. Iran had revealed its existence to the IAEA days earlier, but western officials say that was because it knew it had been discovered

October 2009 An apparent breakthrough at a meeting in Geneva, in which Iran agreed to export 1,200kg of its low-enrichment uranium, 75% of the total, in return for foreign-made, 20%-enriched fuel rods for the Tehran Research Reactor (TRR). The deal breaks down three weeks later in Vienna

February 2010 President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announces that Iran has made its own 20%-enriched uranium

May 2010 Brazil and Turkey broker a deal on the TRR fuel swap along same lines as the Geneva proposal. However, US and its allies reject the deal as too late, in view of Iran’s nuclear progress since Geneva

January 2011 An attempt to restart international negotiations on the Iranian nuclear programme breaks down in Istanbul

November 2011 The IAEA issues a report citing extensive evidence of past work on nuclear weapons, confirming that Iran had tripled its production of 20% uranium and made the underground Fordow site fully operational

January-February 2012 IAEA inspectors visit Tehran to investigate evidence pointing to a past weapons programme, but say they did not receive sufficient co-operation

Julian Borger and Katy Roberts