Austria ? The U.N. atomic monitor on Friday suspended nearly half the technical aid it provides to Iran, a symbolically significant punishment for nuclear defiance that only North Korea and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had faced in the past.

The decision was in line with U.N. Security Council sanctions imposed on Iran for its refusal to suspend uranium enrichment. It must still be approved by the 35 countries on the board of the International Atomic Energy Agency. But with the agency empowered by the Security Council to freeze any aid to Iran that could be misused for nuclear weapons, approval was likely.

IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei’s report to board members called for the full or partial suspension of 18 projects that it deemed could be misused to create nuclear weapons. The agency had already suspended aid to Iran in five instances last month.

Iran insists it will not give up uranium enrichment, saying it is pursuing the technology only to generate energy.