ONCE AGAIN Iran has prevaricated over a deadline from the six international negotiating partners on its nuclear enrichment programme, which may involve pursuit of nuclear weapons.
Rather than offering a specific reply to the offer of a six-week freeze on sanctions and enrichment to prepare the ground for substantive negotiations on its nuclear programme and regional security, it has given a non-committal response.
It is a risky game, since this refusal can readily be interpreted by its most hawkish interlocutors as a last chance to handle the issues involved diplomatically, opening the way towards military means. Consultations yesterday between the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, the European Union and Germany indicated that the United States is especially keen to escalate sanctions over coming months, even though Russia and China are more reluctant to make them stick. Those in the Bush administration who still believe military action against Iran will be needed to stop it developing nuclear weapons made a tactical retreat when it was agreed to offer Iran a diplomatic route, on the assumption that its leaders would not agree to that. They may now claim justification.
Iran is entitled under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to pursue a peaceful nuclear power programme, subject to detailed international scrutiny and investigation that this is not intended to produce nuclear weapons. It is high time the treaty was given a more central role in these talks, which would give any resultant sanctions more international legitimacy should they become necessary. Instead these talks have been dominated by a realpolitik effort, led by the EU, to head off any US unilateral action against Iran.
Until Iranian leaders are certain this option is off the table, they are probably not willing to trust the current diplomatic effort. They are fully aware that the US presidential election in November is a watershed and presumably convinced that the Bush administration could not justify another war to the American public or military on top of Iraq and Afghanistan before Mr Bush leaves office. And they believe Israel would not act on its own without US approval, nor could it under its current transitional leadership.
It is shortsighted of Iranian leaders to dismiss the freeze-for-freeze formula, assuming this is their last word on the matter. They would have more to gain by exploring it substantively, recognising that time is on their side if they have truly peaceful intentions.