Incoming Iranian Reformers Could Face Veto Threat

Conservative Iranian politicians have disparaged a leaked proposal to appoint a number of reformists to cabinet posts under President-elect Hassan Rouhani, raising the prospect that hard-liners could press for clerical vetoes of nominees likelier to seek an international compromise over their nation's atomic activities, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

The United States and its allies have long feared that Iran is pursuing a nuclear arms capacity under the guise of a civilian program, a contention Tehran has consistently denied.

A prominent U.S. nuclear weapons expert on Wednesday said North Korean nuclear test data could augment an Iranian atomic arms capacity in the absence of trial explosions conducted by Tehran, Bloomberg reported.

Any “sharing [of] test information is a very dangerous thing to do," former Los Alamos National Laboratory chief Siegfried Hecker said.

Meanwhile, Iran plans to practice responding to radiological contaminants over 20 days of exercises in August and September, the nation's Press TV reported. An atomic installation could endanger the population and its surroundings if it were hit in an electronic strike, the country's envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency said earlier this month.