Iran has agreed to crack open the books on its uranium enrichment activities, the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency said Thursday — a move that could give experts a better grasp of a program the Security Council fears could be misused to produce atomic bombs. The concession appeared timed in hopes of heading off a rejection by the International Atomic Energy Agency of Iran’s request for technical help in building its Arak plutonium-producing reactor. Unmoved, the IAEA’s 35-nation board denied the aid for at least two years. Tehran’s decision to provide access to the operating records of its pilot uranium enrichment plant at Natanz came with another carrot — a pledge to allow U.N. inspectors to take more samples from a facility that had yielded suspicious traces of enriched uranium. Full Story