Word: nuclearism
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There was something for everyone in last week's IAEA report on Iran's nuclear program. For the bomb-Iran hawks, there was confirmation that Iran continues to enrich uranium despite the limited sanctions of the U.N. Security Council. For Iran's leaders there was confirmation of their cooperation with nuclear inspectors and of the fact that they have not diverted nuclear material for bomb-making purposes. And for advocates of continued diplomacy there was sufficient evidence of Iranian cooperation, and insufficient evidence of any immediate peril, to justify further negotiations...
...Although enriching uranium is permitted under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran's failure to fully disclose all of its past nuclear operations prompted the Security Council to demand a suspension of enrichment until all outstanding concerns can be resolved. What Iran has lately attempted to do is to resolve the IAEA's original complaint without actually turning off its centrifuges. For the U.S. and its allies, however, the key objective is preventing the Iranians from mastering the enrichment know-how that would allow them to produce bomb material. And so the deadlock continues...
...Although proposals for Iran to use nuclear fuel enriched outside its borders are not new, Ahmedinajad's response will certainly raise hopes of a new Iranian flexibility. But Iranian officials have previously indicated that Iran would demand that it be allowed to retain the current research-scale enrichment facilities that are at the heart of the dispute. And it's not hard to see why that would be unacceptable to the U.S. "The amount of enrichment capacity you need to feed a nuclear reactor for energy purposes is actually far greater than what you need to make one bomb...
...hawks are warning that diplomacy is fruitless, and that the President will be forced before the end of his term to choose between military action and accepting a nuclear-armed Iran. The President's former U.N. ambassador John Bolton is openly complaining that Bush is betraying his own best instincts under the malign influence of "pragmatists" such as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice...
...appear to be very widely shared. France, for example, has lately become President Bush's strongest European ally on Iran, but much of what President Nicolas Sarkozy is hearing from his own intelligence services dilutes the sense of urgency - suggesting that Iran is unlikely to cross the threshold to nuclear-weapons capability before 2010 or 2011. Some members of the intelligence community are also warning Sarkozy that the immediate consequences of air strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities would be far more dangerous than Iran's program...