They also decided the Security Council should wait until March to take up Iran's nuclear file after a formal report on Tehran's activities from the U.N. agency, which meets Thursday in Vienna.

"Reporting Iran's dossier to the U.N. Security Council will be unconstructive and the end of diplomacy," said Iran's leading nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani. State television quoted him as sayiny Iran still believes the issue can be resolved peacefully.

Vice President Gholamreza Aghazadeh, who also runs Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation, said it was difficult to predict how the IAEA meeting on Thursday would develop, the semi-official Iranian Students News Agency reported.

"The biggest problem for the West is that they can't find any (legal) justification to refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council," ISNA quoted him as saying.

Larijani also reproached Europe for the London decision, which was taken at the home of British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and attended by the foreign minister of Germany and the foreign policy chief of the European Union.

"Europeans should pay more attention. Iran has called for dialogue and is moving in the direction of reaching an agreement through peaceful means," Larijani said.

Hours earlier, British, French and German representatives had met Larijani's deputy, Javad Vaedi, in Brussels for last-ditch talks on the dispute, but failed to make any progress.

Last week, Larijani flew to Moscow and Beijing to seek Russian and Chinese support against the Western drive to refer Iran to the Security Council.

The decision by Russia and China to vote for referral surprised observers as the two nations have consistently counselled caution on Iran's nuclear file. Both have major economic ties with Iran.

A French government official, speaking on the customary condition of anonymity, said the Russian and Chinese ministers had been persuaded of the need to show a united front.

The United States accuses Iran of trying to build atomic weapons. Iran denies this, saying its nuclear program is only for generating electricity.

Iran broke IAEA seals at a uranium enrichment plant Jan. 10 and resumed small-scale enrichment. The decision provoked an outcry as enrichment is a process that can produce material for nuclear reactors or bombs. Britain, France and Germany, who had been negotiating with Iran, said they would press the IAEA to refer the matter to the Security Council.

If the IAEA votes to refer Iran to the Security Council on Thursday, Iran is likely to retaliate immediately.

Iran's parliament has approved a law requiring the government to stop all voluntary cooperation with IAEA in the event of referral. This would mean that Iran stops allowing IAEA inspectors to carry out intrusive searches of its facilities and the country resumes large-scale enrichment of uranium.

Iran insists it has the right as a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to build nuclear power stations and produce their fuel by enriching its own uranium.

But the United States and Europe do not trust that Iran would enrich uranium only for peaceful purposes because the country has concealed significant aspects of its nuclear program in the past.

While the IAEA has said it has found no evidence of Iran's building nuclear weapons, it has refused to give Iran a clean bill of health because of numerous unanswered questions over its atomic program.

U.S. light crude rose 11 cents to $68.46 a barrel by 11:00 a.m., after climbing 59 cents on Monday. London Brent crude slipped nine cents to $66.50.

The five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council agreed on Tuesday that the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog should report Iran to the council over its nuclear program when it meets in an emergency session on Thursday.

Any such action would spell the end of diplomatic efforts to resolve the issue, Iran's chief nuclear negotiator said.

Libya's oil minister said a referral of OPEC's second biggest producer to the council would have a "very big effect" on prices.

Traders have feared such a move could prompt Tehran to consider using its oil as a political weapon.

"It's a volatile situation," said Sam Tilley, head of research at UK brokerage Sucden Ltd. "Until we get a proper resolution on this, I don't see prices dropping."

Even as the dispute over Iran's atomic program escalated, its oil minister said on Tuesday the country had no plans to halt oil exports.

"We are not mixing oil with politics," Karem Vaziri said.

Concern about stability of supplies from Iran, combined with the impact of lost output from Nigeria and a fall in Russian energy exports have helped drive up oil prices more than a tenth so far this year.

NO NEED TO CUT

The standoff over Iran's nuclear program partly overshadowed an expected decision by OPEC ministers meeting in Vienna to keep oil output steady.

Although OPEC remains concerned over a seasonal dip in second quarter demand, Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi told reporters in Vienna that all OPEC ministers were in agreement to leave output unchanged at their Tuesday meeting.

"Since the price is high there is no need to cut," said Libyan Energy Minister Fathi Omar Bin Shatwan.

"(At) the next meeting, if there is a problem, maybe we will have to cut," he told reporters in Vienna on Tuesday.

Naimi said on Sunday he saw absolutely no reason for OPEC to cut output this year, pointing to economic growth in Asia as driving oil prices.

Japan, the world's third-largest oil consumer, imported nearly 8 percent more crude in December than a year earlier, while its kerosene sales were the highest in more than 50 years amid freezing weather, government data showed on Tuesday.

In Nigeria, oil production closed in by militant attacks should be restarted by the middle of February, Minister of State for Petroleum Edmund Daukora said on Tuesday.

Major producer Royal Dutch Shell has partially restarted output at its 115,000 barrel per day (bpd) EA field, but industry sources said it has no immediate plans to resume repairs on the damaged onshore pipeline that has cut the other 106,000 bpd of its production.

Nigerian militants have said they will continue with their attacks with an aim of reducing exports by 30 percent next month.

Statistics show that China's crude oil output increased from 165 million tons in 2000 to 183 million tons in 2005, and the output of natural gas rose from 27 billion cubic meters to 47.5 billion cubic meters.

New breakthroughs in oil and gas exploration were made in the past five years as the traditional oil fields in East China, such as Daqing, maintained a steady growth.

Oil fields capable of producing high yields were discovered in west China including Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Ningxia HuiAutonomous Region, and Qinghai, Gansu and Shaanxi provinces, and in offshore China's Bohai Bay.

Between 2000 and 2005, six large-scale natural gas zones were discovered in the Tarim, Ordos, Sichuan and Qaidam basins, in the South China Sea and in the East China Sea.

Petroleum and natural gas began to play bigger roles in China's energy consumption structure.

In 2000, 16.6 percent of China's energy demand was met by petroleum, in 2005 it was 22.7 percent. Consumption of natural gasrose from 2.1 percent in 2000 to 2.6 percent in 2005.

China strengthened infrastructure during this period to support the soaring oil and gas demand of the country.

The great pipeline carrying natural gas from China's energy-rich West to the energy-thirsty East was completed at the end of 2004.

By the end of the following year, China had built up a basic pipeline network for natural gas stretching 24,000 kilometers, with 20,000 kilometers for oil products.

Between 2000 and 2005, China amended relevant regulations for closer cooperation with foreign partners.

By the end of 2005, China had signed a total of more than 200 contracts with foreign petroleum partners, attracting foreign capital of over 9.3 billion U.S. dollars and boasting contracted acreage of over 1.05 million square kilometers.

Petrodollar Warfare discusses the crucial shift in US monetary policy during the 1970s away from the gold standard to becoming the monopoly currency for worldwide oil sales, effectively enabling the US to dominate world trade. It then analyses global Peak Oil as an additional driver of US foreign policy and the parallel growth of political fundamentalism in the current US administration. Tracking the emergence of the euro as an important challenger to dollar supremacy, the book pinpoints Hussein's November 2000 switch to selling oil for euros as the defining moment for Iraq and, perhaps - without an immediate change in governance - for the noble American experiment.

This warning should be taken seriously. The Jaish al Mahdi, al Sadr's militia, has emerged as a formidable force since its formation in 2003. Fifteen months ago, in November 2004, when it was less well trained and equipped than today, this army held off a determined assault by US Marines for three weeks in Najaf.

But Iranian interest and influence in Iran are by no means confined to the radical Shi'ite cleric and his fighters. SCIRI, the principal party in the dominant Shi'ite coalition that triumphed in the Iraqi elections, was after all originally founded and fostered in Iran. Its first leader was Ayatollah Mohammed Shahroodi, presently head of the Iranian judiciary. SCIRI's military arm, the Badr Army, fought on the Iranian side in the Iran-Iraq war, and was long regarded as the direct instrument of Iranian intelligence. Elsewhere, Iranian intelligence can look to such assets as Abu Mehdi al-Mohandis--"the engineer"--resident in Najaf with mentoring responsibilities for Sadr's militia there.

In the north, in and around the Kurdish enclave, credible sources attest that Iranian intelligence has been providing some measure of support to Sunni insurgents, including the militant Islamic Sunni group Ansar al Islam. Indeed, the dozen or so senior Iranian Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) commanders killed in a plane crash two weeks ago, possibly including Mohammed Sulaimani, the key Guards official involved in Iraqi affairs, were on their way to Oroumieh in north west Iran, the main base for Iranian operations in northern Iraq.

It may seem counter-intuitive for the Shi'ite Iranians to be supporting groups with a militantly anti-Shi'ite agenda, but this same regime sheltered the Afghan fundamentalist Sunni leader Gulbeddin Hekmatyar for many years, despite deep seated mutual antipathy.

Furthermore, power in Iran is diffused. Iraq is a huge prize, and control of this asset, so obligingly proffered to Iran by George Bush when he toppled Saddam Hussein, is inevitably a matter for contention among powerful factions inside the regime. Revolutionary Guards commanders may have a different agenda from that of the "Etalaat"--intelligence services, or the office of Supreme Leader Khamanei, let alone that of the elected President Amahdinejad. Among other imperatives, these various fiefdoms have financial interests at stake in Iraq. Many of the IRGC commanders, for example, are "Moawedun," meaning they are of Iranian descent but born in Iraq, who have property interests in Iraq.

Following the US invasion, the most influential voice in Iranian policy toward Iraq was that of President Hashemi Rafsanjani, who opted for limited cooperation with the occupiers. Despite alarmist rumors circulating in Baghdad that "One million Iranians had infiltrated into Iraq with fake Iraqi ID cards," most of the Iranians on view were pacific pilgrims thronging the shrine cities of Najaf and Karbala. The consensus in Tehran appeared to be that Iraq should be maintained in what officials called "managed chaos;" both to keep the country weak and discourage a prolonged US occupation while avoiding the wholesale disintegration of Iraq into anarchy.

However, the defeat of Rafsanjani by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the Presidential election and the steadily escalating confrontation with the US over Iran's nuclear program have changed the rules of the game. Ahmadinejad is close to some of the more radical IRGC leaders, and shows little desire to defer to American sensitivities. His outspoken defiance of the west over the nuclear issue, not to mention his remarks about Israel, have only bolstered his political position at home, while his ability to play the Iraq card should certainly give Washington pause. As a close aide to one of the leaders of SCIRI, which is generally considered less violently radical than Moqtada Sadr's group, told me recently "If America attacks Iran, then all bets are off." With such a deterrent at hand, who needs a nuclear weapon?

In his State of the Union address Tuesday, Bush called the Islamic republic "a nation now held hostage by a small clerical elite that is isolating and repressing its people".

But responding to Bush's speech, Ahmadinejad lashed out at "those who are up to their elbows in the blood of the people, who are implicated everywhere where there is war and oppression, who start wars in Asia and Africa, killing people by the million."

The Iranian president also vowed Wednesday his country would not surrender its nuclear ambitions and blasted an agreement between the five permanent members of the UN Security Council to take up the case.

"Those who possess stocks of nuclear arms meet together and take decisions and think that the Iranian people will submit to their decisions," the president said in a speech carried live on state television.

"I tell these countries who want to violate the rights of the Iranian people that the Iranian people will not be influenced by their propaganda," he said, vowing the Islamic republic would "continue on the road to victory".

The foreign ministers of the five permanent Security Council members agreed in London overnight Monday to haul Iran's case to New York after the country resumed sensitive nuclear fuel research work and deepened fears it could acquire the atom bomb.

A referral is likely to come during an emergency meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) 35-nation board of governors, which begins on Thursday.

"They believe they are dealing with a second-rate people with no culture. But we will build nuclear power stations everywhere in the country with a capacity of 20,000 megawatts," Ahmadinejad asserted.

"Our people will not bow to a few tyrannical countries who think they are the whole world," he added.

"The language of the Europeans and the West is from the Middle Ages. They live in a colonial dream. The action of the Westerners will have no influence on the decisions of the Iranian people," said the president, who was speaking during a visit to the southern city of Bushehr.

Bushehr is where, with Russian assistance, Iran is building its first nuclear power station. The Islamic regime insists it only wants to generate electricity.

"I do not want to use the term scandalous," Larijani said of the decision, adding that Iran "will use all peaceful means to achieve its nuclear technology rights within the framework of the Non-Proliferation Treaty."

"I still think we can get a good result, but if the Europeans chose a non-peaceful path... it will not be in their interests," he added. "We advise them to continue constructive negotiations with Iran."

The referral is likely to come during an emergency meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency's 35-nation board of governors, which begins on Thursday.

But, in a compromise with Russia, the powers agreed to put off UN action until at least March.

The head of Iran's nuclear negotiating team Javad Vaidi said Iran would stick by its January 10 move to resume uranium enrichment research – a sensitive process the West fears will give Iran nuclear weapons know-how.

"The research activities are an inalienable right for Iran" and the decision to resume the work earlier this month – which triggered the latest crisis between Tehran and the West – is "irreversible," he said.

He also inisted that the research work had no links with industrial-scale production of uranium enrichment which "is still suspended."

Iran has already threatened that if referred to New York – or even if the Security Council is merely "informed" – it would retaliate by limiting IAEA inspections and resuming large-scale enrichment.peIran argues that it only wants to generate electricity and has a right to possess nuclear technology as a signatory of the NPT.

Atomic Energy Agency chief Gholamreza Agazadeh told the ISNA news agency there was no legal justification to bring Tehran before the Security Council.

"The Europeans cannot find a legal basis within the rules of the International Atomic Agency to send the Iranian dossier to the UN Security Council, and that is their greatest difficulty," he said.

In a joint statement after a four-hour dinner, foreign ministers from six countries – the permanent five of Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States plus Germany – said they had agreed that the UN nuclear watchdog "should report to the Security Council its decision on the steps required of Iran" when the IAEA board meets in Vienna Thursday.

A move by Iran to cut off cooperation or a push ahead with nuclear fuel work would lead to a further escalation of the crisis.

But Iranian compliance with IAEA demands to cease such work and greater cooperation with IAEA inspectors could defuse the situation.

Iran has been appealing for more time to negotiate with Moscow on a compromise proposal – and it remains unclear if an expected Security Council referral will speed up these talks or prompt Iran to pull out of them.

Russia's idea is for Iran's uranium to be enriched on Russian soil, something that could allay Western fears that the clerical regime will acquire sensitive dual-use technology but at the same time guarantee Iran's access to nuclear energy.

Iran is building a 1,000-megawatt nuclear power plant in Bushehr with Russian help. The existence of the site is common knowledge. It has been under construction for more than three decades, since before the founding of the Islamic Republic in 1979.

Two other nuclear research facilities, now under development, have come to light: a uranium enrichment plant in the city of Natanz and a deuterium ("heavy water") facility in the city of Arak. Neither is in operation. The only question of interest is whether these facilities offer a plausible route to the manufacture of plutonium-based nuclear bombs, and the short answer is: They do not.

The Bushehr plant is only part of the argument that Iran is embarked on a nuclear weapons program, but it is the part that can readily be analyzed. State Department accusations of dangerous Iranian intentions for the Natanz and Arak facilities are based on a patchwork of untestable, murky assertions from dubious sources, including the People's Mujahedeen (Mujahedeen-e Khalq, MEK or MKO), which the United States identifies as a terrorist organization. These sources assert that there are centrifuges for enriching uranium (an alternative to fissile plutonium for bombs) or covert facilities for extracting plutonium. Neither of these claims are especially credible, since the sources are either unidentified or are the same channels which disseminated the stories about Iraq's non-conventional weapons or the so-called chemical and biological weapons plant in Khartoum.

The testable part of the claim -- that the Bushehr reactor is a proliferation threat -- is demonstrably false. There are several reasons, some technical, some institutional.

--The Iranian reactor yields the wrong kind of plutonium for making bombs.

--The spent fuel pins in the Iranian reactor would, in any case, be too dangerous to handle for weapons manufacture.

--Any attempt to divert fuel from the Iranian plant will be detectable.

--The Russian partners in the Bushehr project have stipulated that the fuel pins must be returned to Russia, as has been their practice worldwide for other export reactors.

Just as there are many different kinds of nuclear reactors, there are different forms of plutonium, distinctions that are almost never made in public discussions of nuclear proliferation.

There are two different kinds of reactors, heavy-water or graphite-moderated reactors; and pressurized, or "light water" reactors (PWRs). The Dimona nuclear power plant in Israel is an example of the former. The Bushehr plant is the latter.

The Israeli plant is ideal for yielding the desirable isotope of Plutonium (Pu 239) necessary for making bombs. The Iranian plant will produce plutonium, but the wrong kind. It will produce the heavier isotopes, Pu240, Pu241 and Pu242 -- almost impossible to use in making bombs.

Crucial to extracting weapons-grade plutonium is the type of reactor and the mode in which it is operated. The Israeli-type plant can be refueled "on line," without shutting down. Thus, high-grade plutonium can be obtained covertly and continuously. In the Iranian plant, the entire reactor will have to be shut down -- a step that cannot be concealed from satellites, airplanes and other sources -- in order to permit the extraction of even a single fuel pin.

In the Israeli reactor, the fuel is recycled every few weeks, or at most every couple of months. This maximizes the yield of the highest-quality, weapons-grade plutonium. In the Iranian-type reactor, the core is exchanged only every 30-40 months -- the longer the fuel cycle, the better for the production of power.

For the Iranian reactor at Bushehr, any effort to divert fuel will be transparent because a shutdown will be immediately noticeable. No case of production of bomb-grade material from fuel from an Iranian-type plant has ever been reported.

No one can read the collective mind of a government. But even if Iran proves in the future to have ambitions for developing nuclear weapons, any actual production is years, perhaps decades away. Furthermore, Iran has fully acquiesced to the international inspections process. Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). On June 22, the head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization, Gholam-Reza Aghazadeh, reiterated that all of Iran's nuclear facilities are open for inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in compliance with treaty guarantees.

Stauffer is a former nuclear engineer and specialist in Middle Eastern energy economics. Beeman is director of Middle East Studies at Brown University. Each has conducted research in Iran for more than 30 years.

Copyright © 2004 Pacific News Service

The Washington official line seems meant to build pressure at the UN Security Council to impose sanctions on Iran, even while conceding that nothing practical is expected to result, and that nothing can be done about Iran’s resumption of nuclear processing. Iran at present is doing no more than it has a right to do in international law.

The crossfire of public pronouncements draws attention to the inherent criticism of the Western position: the US and the other Security Council members can have nuclear weapons, and Israel, Pakistan and India (non-Security Council members), can have them too, but Iran shouldn’t proceed with its (currently) non-military programme. The US is even in discussion with India to supply nuclear materials (for strictly peaceful purposes, of course).

All of this piles up in righteous Iranian eyes as evidence that Iran needs to go beyond its present programme and actually build nuclear weapons. National prestige and pride are involved, obviously — and nationalism is probably the most powerful of all political forces.

Military strategy is also involved. So far as anyone in the non-Western world can see, Iraq’s mistake in 2003 was not to have a nuclear bomb or two in working order. That would have kept the US at bay, just as uncertainty about North Korea’s nuclear arms inhibits US policy in the Far East.

Iran already possesses non-nuclear deterrents to American attack, which Iraq did not, and they are probably strong enough to keep both the US and Israel away from Iranian nuclear sites.

Iran can close down a major part of Middle Eastern oil shipments by closing the Strait of Hormuz. It has combined Revolutionary Guard and ground forces three times the total of American forces now active in Iraq, where Tehran also has influence on the Shia clerical leadership, which holds the key to Iraq’s future.

Nuclear weapons proliferation in the non-Western world is an old American preoccupation, but it is directly linked to Third World perceptions of the threat of American military intervention. The main, if not the only, advantage that nuclear weapons provide a country such as Iran is the deterrence of intervention by the US or Israel. The urge to possess these weapons is directly reciprocal to American non-proliferation pressures, and the threat of attack.

(The India-Pakistan case is an exception to these generalisations, since there the perceived threats are strictly bilateral, and the two countries have simply replicated for themselves, at great cost, the balance of terror that existed between the US and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.)

Possession of the bomb would also bring comfort and prestige to Iran in dealing with its nuclear-armed neighbours, which include Pakistan and Russia, as well as Israel.

In theory, a threat of aggressive use of nuclear weapons exists, but in the Middle East it is accompanied by certainty of overwhelming Israeli (or even American) retaliation. Warning by American politicians that "rogue states" might attack Israel, the US, British bases on Cyprus, or Western Europe, are manipulation or propaganda. Individual Muslims may welcome martyrdom, but nations, even Muslim nations, do not.

Israel, with its conventional arms and weapons of mass destruction, is amply capable of assuring its own military deterrence and defence, whatever Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, thinks or says. But Israel cannot expect long-term security without resolving its conflict with the Palestinians. As Israeli leaders know, solving the problem is chiefly up to Israel. Forty years of American involvement have mainly enabled the Israelis to avoid doing so.

The danger of terrorists acquiring nuclear weapons exists, if barely. This would be possible only with a nuclear state’s complicity. The political plausibility of any government giving terrorists control of such weapons is next to nil, considering the risks involved for the benefactor state. The technical and logistical complexity of such an operation would also be great.

There are serious problems in international affairs and there are baroque ones. This one is baroque.

ABN Amro last month admitted to improper transactions with Iran through a branch in Dubai and agreed to pay 80 million dollars in fines.

Other major firms still operating in Iran are also under scrutiny, including HSBC bank, Standard Chartered, and BNP Paribas, the paper wrote.

Federal authorities are conducting several sweeping sanctions inquiries, looking at compliance with US sanctions against Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan and Cuba, the report said.

The investigations are examining whether European banks with branches in New York adhered to US sanctions and prohibitions against individuals or firms designated as having links to terrorism.

US enforcement of the sanctions has become stricter following demands from lawmakers in Congress in 2004, the paper reported.

"In the past, they have been lax," said Karim Sadjapour, an analyst with the International Crisis Group told the daily.

Iran faces mounting international concern over its nuclear program, which Western governments suspect is a cover for a weapons project. Tehran insists it is a purely peaceful program designed to generate electricity and has threatened to cut back on oil exports if UN Security Council members choose to impose sanctions.

Foreign ministers from Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States agreed in London on Tuesday to have Iran referred to the UN Security Council over its disputed nuclear program. In a compromise demanded by Russia, UN action would be put off until at least March.

The Bushire reactor -- a "light water" reactor -- produces Pu (plutonium) 240, Pu241 and Pu242. Although these isotopes could theoretically be weaponized, the process is extremely long and complicated, and also untried. To date, no nuclear weapon has ever been produced with plutonium produced with the kind of reactor at Bushire. Moreover, the plant must be completely shut down to extract the fuel rods, making the process immediately open to detection and inspection. Other possible reactors in Iran are far in the future.

The American push for Iran's nuclear development was carried out with great enthusiasm. Professor Ahmad Sadri, chair of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Lake Forest College in Illinois, was a young man in Iran when the United States was touting nuclear power facilities to the government of the Shah. In the 1970s he remembers seeing the American display at the Tehran International Exhibition, which was "dedicated to the single theme of extolling the virtues of atomic energy and the feasibility of its transfer to Iran." Sadri also remembers an encounter with Octave J. Du Temple, executive director emeritus of the American Nuclear Society, who fondly reminisced about half a dozen trips in the early 1970s to Tehran and Shiraz in order to participate in conferences and summits on "transfer of nuclear technology."

Washington international lawyer Donald Weadon, who was active in Iran during this period, points out that after 1972 and the oil crisis, the United States was rabidly pursuing investment opportunities in Iran, including selling nuclear power plants. "The Iranians were wooed hard with the prospect of nuclear power from trusted, U.S.-backed suppliers," he says, "with the prospect of the reservation of significant revenues from oil exports for foreign and domestic investment."

American dissimulation on this point reveals some interesting motives on Washington's part. Iran under the Shah was as much of a threat to its neighbors (including Iraq) as it might be said to be today. Its nuclear ambitions then could have been inflated and denigrated in exactly the same way they are being inflated and denigrated today, but the United States was blissfully unconcerned. The big difference is that Iran is now perceived to be a threat to Israel, and this fuels much of the threat of military action.

Even those who admit that the United States helped start Iran's current nuclear development can produce only two factors that make a difference in how Iran should be treated today as opposed to the 1970s. The most recent factor is President Ahmadinejad's widely denounced remarks attacking Israel. The second, older factor is Iran's alleged concealment of nuclear energy development activities in the past.

President Ahmadinejad's remarks have little or no connection with any probable action on Iran's part regarding Israel. His pronouncements were designed primarily to shore up support from extremist elements among his own revolutionary supporters. Moreover, Ahmadinejad has no control over Iran's foreign policy or its nuclear energy program, and his views are not embraced by Iran's clerical leaders.

The second accusation, that Iran has "regularly hidden information about its nuclear program" is equally specious. Much of what the United States has called "concealment" was never concealed at all, when the reports of the United Nations inspection team are examined. Many of the U.S. charges about removing topsoil and bulldozing material at some of the research sites are unsupported by the United Nations. Moreover, even if one concedes that Iran did conceal some processes, this activity started 18-20 years ago, when the revolution was still young and Ayatollah Khomeini was still alive, under completely different political actors than are in power today.

Indeed, whatever Iran did or didn't do in the past, they are in compliance with the NNPT at present. Indeed, there would be no way to accuse them of anything if they had not been so compliant about responding to NNPT requests for information. The NNPT grants all signatories the right to pursue nuclear research for peaceful purposes of precisely the kind in which Iran is currently engaged.

The mantra "Iran must not get nuclear weapons" has been repeated so often now that most people have come to believe that Iran has them or is getting them. This implication is completely unproven. The tragedy would be that in the end, U.S. hostility may goad Iran into a real nuclear weapons program.