Face-Off
America and Iran are locked in a test of wills over Tehran's nuclear ambitions. Is there a way out short of war?
It's not the sort of letter an American president usually receives from a foreign leader. The missive last week from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to "your excellency" George W. Bush--the highest-level communication between Tehran and Washington in 27 years of official enmity--meanders over 18 pages of religious and philosophical terrain. But to western eyes it never got to the heart of the matter: Iran's nuclear ambitions. Iranian officials still called it a diplomatic "opening"; Bush dismissed it as so much piffle.
Yet the timing was no happenstance--arriving just hours before foreign ministers convened at the United Nations to consider steps toward imposing sanctions on Iran. Whether or not the letter was a factor, the Bush administration didn't get the tough Security Council resolution it sought, and instead acceded to a proposal by Europe to craft a package of incentives in energy and trade for Iran if it stops cooking up uranium, along with a battery of sanctions if it does not. Some U.S. officials couldn't help but admire the zest for the diplomatic game shown by Iran, a nation of chess players. "They've been exceptionally good at turning isolation around," concedes one, "and putting the spotlight on the U.S."
That's a sobering thought, for to dissuade Iran from enriching uranium--the key process in producing nuclear fuel for either electricity generation or for atomic bombs--Washington will need to be on top of its diplomatic game. It will have to galvanize a broad coalition of countries to squeeze the Islamic republic hard if it persists, but with opposition from Russia and China and wariness elsewhere, success may be out of reach.
Meanwhile, signs of a showdown are gathering. In defiance of the Security Council, Iran has enriched uranium in an experimental "cascade" of 164 centrifuges to a 4.8 percent concentration--suitable for power plants but still far below the 90 percent enrichment level needed for a bomb. With staged fanfare, Ahmadinejad declared that Iran has joined the nuclear club. Iran is now readying additional cascades, and Ahmadinejad has disclosed that research on a more sophisticated type of centrifuge that would speed enrichment is already underway. Iran's goal is to place 54,000 high-speed centrifuges in two underground halls at Natanz, in central Iran. In Isfahan, it has overcome production problems to manufacture 121 tons of uranium hexafluoride gas--enough of the feedstock for centrifuges for at least 10 bombs.
Point of no return? Iran claims it is only honing the technology for civilian nuclear power, but its actions--including 18 years of hiding nuclear activities from required international inspections--suggest otherwise. And Iran continues to hinder the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is probing military links to the nuclear program and documents related to warhead construction. "The Iranians," asserts the State Department's top official for proliferation matters, Robert Joseph, "have put both feet on the accelerator." In terms of mastering the running of centrifuges, he says, "we are very close to that point of no return."
Not everyone buys that, and all judgments are plagued by intelligence gaps. "The sense of urgency is being pumped up for demagogic reasons," contends Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter. "It's being made by the same people who pushed us into war with Iraq." Reports of accelerated Pentagon planning for possible airstrikes on Iranian nuclear sites--though called "wild speculation" by Bush--are jangling nerves in the Mideast and Europe. Iran, for its part, is brandishing a full menu of reprisals: attacking Israel, dispatching suicide bombers, spreading nuclear technology, abandoning the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, concealing all of its atomic efforts, and withholding oil from stressed world markets.
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