The mad mullahs of Iran are still just that: mad. Iran is a gathering danger, and has been since the Islamists overthrew the Shah in 1979. Given their size and strength, armed confrontation is difficult to imagine, so containment may be the only option for now. A metastasis of democracy inside the Middle East -- nurtured in neighboring Iraq -- is probably the only hope for the longer term.
Iran has reneged on a promise to fully suspend uranium enrichment, making it likely the Tehran government will be under intense scrutiny when the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency next meets, Western diplomats and nuclear experts told The Associated Press on Tuesday.Tehran announced it had suspended uranium enrichment late last year, seeking to ease international concerns that it was trying to build nuclear weapons.
Diplomats told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity that even key European nations who negotiated the deal with Tehran have started to question Iran's commitment because it appears to be using semantics — the meaning of the word suspend — to keep some of its nuclear enrichment program operational.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog based in Vienna, last fall asked Iran to stop "enrichment-related activities." But while Tehran has stopped introducing uranium into enrichment equipment, it is still making and assembling centrifuges used to spin uranium into low-grade fuel for peaceful use or high-grade material, for weapons.
One possible spinoff: a higher probability of nukes in Saudi Arabia, which fears a nuclear-armed Iran that has not been content to mind only its own affairs.
Posted by Alan at January 20, 2004 12:04 PM