IAEA Ultimatum to Iran Suits All Parties to the Row

IAEA Ultimatum to Iran Suits All Parties to the Row
My current faavorite journalist (and that recognition is very difficult to achieve) has made a nice story on Iran's nuclear ambitions and the International Atomic Energy Association's (IAEA) reactions to Iran.

A Persian proverb says: “From this signpost on the road to the next, there is hope!” And it was in that spirit that the International Atomic Energy Agency decided last Saturday to give Iran until Nov. 25 to comply with its obligations under the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT).
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This is... the third time in two years that the IAEA has fixed “a signpost” for Iran before moving to the next with no more than some timid huffing and puffing. IAEA spokesmen have made it clear that, come Nov. 25, they would simply “review the situation” once again. The new “signpost” suits all sides of this bizarre dispute.
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The present Iranian leadership has never committed itself to foreswearing nuclear weapons forever, and cannot do that for at least two reasons.

The first is that no regime worth its salt will voluntarily limit its options when it comes to national defense, especially when none of its neighbors are asked to do the same. Iran is at the center of a region with the largest number of nuclear powers: Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Israel, and the United States, thanks to the NATO presence in Turkey. Ali Khamenei has issued a statement forbidding the use of nuclear weapons, but not manufacturing them.

The second reason is that the present Iranian government is in conflict not only with the regional status quo, which it sees as a threat, but also against the so-called global system dominated by the Islamic Republic’s archfoe, the United States.
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The real question is whether or not the major powers are prepared to accept the Islamic Republic on its own terms, which includes a capacity to manufacture nuclear weapons, or will be able to persuade Tehran to abandon its revolutionary ambitions and seek a normal place within the global system? And this, as all those involved know without saying so, is a geo-strategic problem, not a technical one about uranium enrichment and centrifuges.

The article is highly recommended, and I have quoted only a small bit of its content.