A Nuclear Blunder?

All signs are that by the end of the month, that loophole will remain. The Bush administration has achieved, for the moment, a united front with France, Germany and Britain in seeking to pressure the Iranians to open up and cease uranium enrichment. But now the administration finds itself outflanked at the conference as it seeks to win a wider international consensus in favor of a hard line against Iran. Bush officials have said that if they must eventually confront Tehran, they want to correct the unilateralist mistakes made in the run-up to the war in Iraq. Yet in the last week, as the conference began, the United States found it had to concede a key point on the agenda. It had to drop its demands for a veiled reference to the threats from rogue states and terrorism since 2000, including the covert development of an Iranian nuclear program. Talks have been all but paralyzed since, to the point where the delegates can't even agree on a basic agenda for the conference.

Iranian officials at the conference say they are happily signing onto the agenda of the "nuclear have-nots" led by the non-aligned movement, which insists the United States and other nuclear states hold to their side of the NPT bargain. This includes supplying civilian nuclear technology and committing to an eventual dismantling of their nuclear arsenals. It is this agenda, one Iranian official involved in the discussions told NEWSWEEK, that is likely to dominate the meeting "despite the U.S. attempt to divert attention by focusing on Iran."

© 2005