Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Still defiant

Talks between Iran and the Europeans will be fraught

AFTER ducking and weaving in the diplomatic crossfire, Iran has again managed to get through a meeting of the 35-nation board of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN's nuclear guardian, without being referred to the UN Security Council for its egregious breaches of nuclear safeguards. Instead, the IAEA's own guardians welcomed Iran's “voluntary” suspension of work towards producing uranium and plutonium as a confidence-building measure. Assuming it draws no more fire from the agency's inspectors, who will keep probing its nuclear past and monitor the suspension, on December 15th Iran will start talks with Britain, France, Germany and the EU to try to end the stand-off over its nuclear plans.

Once they all get round a table, the Europeans hope to talk Iran permanently out of the nuclear fuel-making business, since the uranium and plutonium dabbling that it claims is solely for generating electricity at some point in the future would also handily equip it for making weapons. Under a deal struck earlier last month, inducements could include outside supplies of nuclear fuel, a replacement for a heavy-water reactor that Iran says it plans to build for research, but which would be ideally suited for bomb-making, support for joining the World Trade Organisation, political talks and a new security dialogue.

Yet getting Iran to the table at all has proved tough. A similar agreement struck in October last year fell through. Inspectors kept turning up new evidence of wrong-doing, and Iran reneged on its promise to suspend all uranium enrichment. This time Iran tried to exempt preparation of some material for its enrichment machines from the ban, then some 20 of the centrifuges themselves (and it still wants to continue some research with these). But the Europeans put their foot down. Only a complete halt would help overcome what Mohamed ElBaradei, the IAEA's director-general, has called the “confidence deficit” created by Iran's past lies and cover-ups.

Whether the talks later this month will get very far is open to doubt. While celebrating an “historic opportunity” for Iran and Europe to slap down what he called the “unilateralists”, this week Iran's chief negotiator insisted that his country would never give up its right to the nuclear technologies in question. But neither “unilateralist” America, nor the Europeans, believe Iran's claim of peaceful intent.

Inspectors may not have unearthed an Iranian bomb, but they have found most things short of that. This week's IAEA resolution makes clear that they are still not sure there are no undeclared nuclear goings-on in Iran. If Iran reneges on its suspension promise, or inspectors find more troubling evidence (they have been barred from two military sites), the Europeans say they will go back to the IAEA and to the UN. America reserves the right to take the issue directly to the Security Council, without the rest of the IAEA's board if need be.

Most of those on the board hope the Europeans will find a way to end to the crisis. Countries such as Brazil and South Africa, with some of the technologies Iran is accused of abusing, want nothing to impair their peaceful use of nuclear power. But the board's reluctance to bring Iran's catalogue of proven breaches to the Security Council, as it is obliged to do, opens up other dangers. An over-confident Iran may calculate it can restart uranium work after an interval and get away with it. And, as America's delegate to the IAEA pointed out this week, holding fire over Iran could damage the credibility of inspections and of the non-proliferation regime itself.

Talks between Iran and the EU3 are fraught.