The United States has decided confrontation is the only way to deal with Iran's nuclear programme, writes Graham Usher in New York The attrition over Iran's nuclear programme increased another notch last week as Tehran met a series of aggressive American gestures with bravado, apparent conciliation and, finally, defiance. The heat was raised by the United States announcement on 31 January that it would be putting arms-laden cruisers on permanent patrol off the Iranian coast and deploying Patriot missile "defence" systems in Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Kuwait. These are combined with existing Patriot systems in Israel and Saudi Arabia. And all are geared towards the same foe. "Iran is clearly seen as a very serious threat by those on the other side of the Gulf front," said General David Petraeus, the US top military commander in the Middle East, at a conference in Washington on 22 January. Combined with US-led moves to impose a fourth round of UN Security Council sanctions, the deployments are means of ratcheting up pressure to deter Iran from pursuing a nuclear programme it says is its right under international law but which the US, Europe, Israel and certain Arab states believe is a cover for becoming the world's tenth nuclear armed state. They also signal a shift in policy for the Obama administration from engagement to confrontation. In response Iran has radiated confusion. Its Foreign Ministry said that with the deployments Washington was trying to stoke "Iran phobia" among Arab Gulf states. And its Defence Ministry fired a rocket into space carrying an "experimental capsule" which Western powers fear could be a prototype nuclear warhead. Yet these "provocative acts" (according to Washington) were followed by Iran's most conciliatory talk in months. In October the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) offered a deal to at least partially defuse the crisis: Iran would export 70 per cent of its low enriched uranium stockpile to Russia and France where it would be processed into fuel for a reactor in Tehran. Iran reportedly rejected the deal on the grounds that, once sent abroad, there were no guarantees the uranium would be returned. But this was a misunderstanding, said President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in an interview on Iranian state TV on 2 February. "If we allow them [France and Russia] to take [the low enriched uranium], there is no problem," he said. "We sign a contract to give 3.5 per cent enriched uranium and receive 20 per cent enriched [uranium] after four or five months." At a meeting with the IAEA on 6 February Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki was buoyant. "We are approaching a final agreement that can be accepted by all parties," he said. The only condition was that Iran -- and not the IAEA -- would decide the amount of uranium to be enriched. But that is a deal-breaker: the 70 per cent quantity to be sent abroad was declared by the IAEA precisely to slow Iran's capacity to make a bomb. Nor do Ahmadinejad's comments now seem to have been serious. One day later he instructed Iran's Atomic Energy Agency to "start enriching [uranium] up to 20 per cent" even though "the path to cooperation is open, if they [the IAEA] come and agree to exchange without preconditions." If carried out, this would not only put Iran in further breach of UN Security Council resolutions. It would put the country in a position to produce the 90 per cent enriched uranium needed to make nuclear weapons, say nuclear experts. It is also almost certainly bravado. The same experts say Iran's nuclear industry lacks the technology to enrich uranium to 20 per cent levels. But it is enough to unite those powers who believe the way to thwart Iran is through sanction rather than cooperation. On news of the latest Iranian move US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said: "The only path that is left to us at this point... is pressure. But it will require all the international community to work together." The five Security Council powers are not together. Like the US, the UK and France want "strong" sanctions, targeting particularly Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps: overseers of the nuclear programme and the main force repressing the pro-democracy movement that grew in the aftermath of last year's presidential election. But China -- which imports 15 per cent of its oil from Iran -- is opposed. And Russia, historically the co-builder of Iran's nuclear industry, is reluctant. Following a meeting with Mottaki on 6 February, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov agreed that Iran "has legitimate security concerns". He also acknowledged "we cannot tackle the Iranian nuclear programme in isolation by ignoring what is going on in the region, including between Israel and the Arab states." Both issues have been repeatedly raised by Iran in negotiations. But Lavrov also called on Iran to send most of its uranium abroad in line with the October IAEA proposal. "It could really make a difference and create a new atmosphere," he said. That sentiment is shared by Iran's allies on the Security Council. In recent months Turkey has been the most outspoken in denouncing Western "hypocrisy" in sanctioning alleged Iran's nuclear ambitions whilst leaving Israel's actual nuclear arsenal unsanctioned, unmonitored and unacknowledged. But Ankara knows that Iran cannot fight sanctions without regional alliances or in defiance of UNSC resolutions the authority of which, in other conflicts, it invokes.
