DAR AL ISLAM - IRAN: MIXED SIGNALS FROM IRAN?!?

Iran sends mixed signals
Financial Times

When tensions are running high throughout the Middle East and between Tehran and Washington, the question of how far forward Iran is with its nuclear programme could barely be more important.

The answer depends on who you ask - and what their political agenda is. One group emphasises the speed of Iran's progress and is unhappy with the current strategy of incremental sanctions to persuade Tehran to rein in its programme. The other plays down Iran's development, insisting there is plenty of time for the slow-acting sanctions to change Iran's behaviour.
The first group includes an unlikely collection of people.

John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the United Nations, thinks the US should contemplate using force against Iran.

Mohammad Al Baradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, thinks the West has to compromise more. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's president, says nothing will deter Tehran from forging ahead.

All three, however, have recently argued that Iran's recent advances indicate that the current UN sanctions policy has failed.

"Iran has clearly mastered the enrichment technology now," Bolton told the UK's Daily Telegraph last week, referring to uranium enrichment, which can produce both nuclear fuel and weapons grade material.

"We believe they pretty much have the knowledge about how to enrich,'' Al Baradei told the New York Times.

"I declare that as of today our dear country has joined the nuclear club of nations and can produce nuclear fuel on an industrial scale," Ahmadinejad said at a ceremony at Iran's nuclear facility in Natanz on April 9.

Champions of the UN's incremental approach convey a different message. Nicholas Burns, US undersecretary of state, emphasises the difficulty of uranium enrichment and dismisses Iranian announcements as "fantastic claims". He says: "There is still time for diplomacy."

European Union diplomats agree. They argue that Iran has rushed ahead with its programme for political reasons when it has still failed to master the technology and may face greater risk of breakdowns as a results.

Part of the reason for the diverging views is the limited information available: the IAEA this week lamented that its knowledge of Iran's activities had "deteriorated".

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