Here's what's going on: Iran will continue as long as it can to make the bare minimum gestures it needs to in order to buy time, while continuing business as usual. "Iran to resume uranium enrichment despite Turkey deal," from CNN, May 17:

(CNN) -- Iran will continue to enrich uranium to 20 percent, it said Monday, despite agreeing hours earlier to ship its low-enriched uranium to Turkey.

Foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast told the Islamic Republic News Agency shortly after the announcement of the deal with Turkey that Iran will not stop enriching its own uranium.

That deal had been designed to answer international concerns that Iran was secretly trying to build nuclear weapons -- a charge it has long denied.

"With this agreement there are no more excuses left for the other side to impose pressure and continue with hindering the whole process of fuel exchange for Iran," Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, said Monday.

He said he hoped the deal would lead the United Nations nuclear energy watchdog to close its file on Iran "forever."

His speech was carried live by Iran's government-backed Press TV.

The offer -- announced in a joint statement Monday by Iran, Turkey and Brazil -- would have Iran send 1,200 kg (2,645 lbs) of its low-enriched uranium to Turkey within a month, and the international group monitoring Iran's nuclear activities send 120 kg (264 lbs) of high-enriched uranium to Iran within a year.

The group to whom Iran is making the offer -- the so-called Vienna Group of the United States, Russia, France, and the International Atomic Energy Agency -- did not respond immediately.

Iran, Turkey and Brazil said Iran would formally notify the IAEA of the proposal within a week.

If the deal is not accepted, Turkey will return Iran's low-enriched uranium, the joint statement said.

Turkey's indifference to the success or failure of this arrangement is telling:

Turkish foreign ministry spokesman Burak Ozugergin said Iran had made a major concession. "Iran is ready to deliver," he said. "If the deal goes through that's fine. If it doesn't, then the 1,200 kilograms in Turkey will continue to belong to Iran and can be arranged for return."

It is not clear how Iran's insistence that it will continue to enrich uranium itself is related to its offer to send low-enriched uranium abroad....

Every five years or so the United Nations hosts a foreign minister level conference to review the implementation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT).  The United Nations has been hosting the latest such review conference this month.

This year, Iranian strongman Mahmoud Ahmadinejad decided to join the party.  He delivered, on the first morning of the review conference, his customary condemnation of Israel and of the United States while defending his country’s nuclear program.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke later the same day, accusing Iran of being the only country attending the UN review conference that is acting with impunity when held to account by the International Atomic Energy Agency and Security Council.  Iran, she said, is consistently violating its obligations under the NPT.   That was a good start, but then she rhetorically crouched into a defensive position.

Clinton said that President Obama had come to office with “an open hand” extended to the Iranian regime.  We “reached out” in many ways, she said, without elaborating and without acknowledging the fact that we have wasted over a year in this futile exercise while Iran marches on towards developing nuclear weapons.

Then, in order to show how transparent the United States really is, Clinton announced that the Obama administration had decided to unilaterally reveal the number of nuclear arms in our arsenal.  She reiterated Obama’s unilateral pledge to develop no new nuclear weapons.  And, in an implied threat to Israel, Clinton said that the United States was “prepared to support practical measures” towards the objective of a nuclear-free Middle East – a stalking horse pushed by Egypt and other Muslim countries in the region to force Israel to give up its suspected nuclear arsenal without any means of assuring that Iran or the other Islamic countries would desist from pursuing their own nuclear arms ambitions.  This was not just feel-good rhetoric.  U.S. officials are reportedly in talks with Egypt over a plan to make the Middle East a nuclear-free zone.

Some have criticized Israel for not joining the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and refusing to declare its suspected nuclear arsenal.  However, Israel has observed the conduct of rogue states that have joined the NPT like North Korea, which quit the treaty once it had successfully tested nuclear weapons, and Iran which regularly flouts its NPT obligations.  Faced with existential threats from Iran and its armed terrorist surrogates, Israel is correct in asserting that there must be real peace in the Middle East before agreeing to any nuclear-free zone.

Hillary Clinton also mentioned in her speech at the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty review conference that the Obama administration would submit Protocols to the Senate for ratification regarding nuclear-free zones in Africa and the South Pacific.  However, our Secretary of State said nothing about maintaining a nuclear-free zone in Latin America even though there is a real threat of the spread of nuclear arms technology from Iran and North Korea to Venezuela.  The reason for Clinton’s silence on Latin America, I believe, was not to embarrass Brazil, whose foreign minister addressed the UN conference immediately after Clinton.

Brazil, according to some reports, is busy moving forward with its own nuclear development program.  It has already had three secret military nuclear programs between 1975 and 1990, and is now embarking on the building of nuclear-powered submarines.  During his election campaign, Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva criticized the NPT, calling it unfair and obsolete.  Although Brazil has signed the treaty, it has placed restrictions on inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency and has defended Iran’s nuclear program.

President Obama has called Lula, as the Brazilian president is called, “my man.”  Obama said he “loved this guy,” calling him “the most popular politician in the world.” Yet Lula is the same man whose pals include Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez.  He is the same man who said that there was “no fraud in the Iranian election,” congratulating President Ahmadinejad on his stolen election.   He is the same man who decided to open a Brazilian embassy in North Korea shortly after Kim Jong Il’s missile testing. And he is the same man who laid flowers in the terrorist Yasser Arafat’s grave, but refused to follow the custom of other visiting presidents to Israel of laying down flowers in the grave of Theodor Herzl, revered in Israel as its founder.

Obama loves Lula and trusts him more than he trusts the leader of one of our closest allies, Israel.  He is willing to press Israel to give up its nuclear deterrent in pursuit of a nuclear-free Middle East that Iran is certain to ignore, while giving Lula (not to mention Hugo Chavez in Venezuela) a free pass to possibly pursue a nuclear arms capability.

Hillary Clinton’s speech to the UN Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty review conference was yet another demonstration of the appeasement policies that the Obama administration is recklessly pursuing.  It wants to show the world the virtues of nonproliferation by unilateral actions that put our security at risk.

The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty is ineffective and Clinton even admitted in her speech that it would not be fixed anytime soon to give it the enforcement teeth that it would need.  Yet the treaty appears to be a centerpiece of President Obama’s nuclear disarmament policy along with unilateral actions he is taking.

Not once did we hear Clinton mention the only multilateral mechanism that has proven effective in preventing dangerous nuclear proliferation – the Proliferation Security Initiative.  This Bush administration initiative involved naval surveillance and interdiction to stop the transport of nuclear arms materials and missile technology to and from states and non-state actors of proliferation concern.  It was used successfully, for example, to effectively end Libya’s nuclear ambitions.

President Obama has expressed support for enhancing the PSI, but there is scant evidence to date that he means it.  Instead of emphasizing muscular diplomacy to stop dangerous nuclear proliferation backed by a credible threat of interdiction, Obama wants to lead the way to total nuclear disarmament.  He may lead the way, but the world’s dictators who get their hands on nuclear materials will surely not follow.

Iran is locked in dispute with the United States and its allies over its nuclear energy programme which Western countries fear is aimed at allowing Iran the chance to develop nuclear weapons. Tehran says it is only interested in electricity.

The International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) governing board meets in Vienna next week to discuss Iran while world powers are deliberating new sanctions on Iran at the level of the U.N. Security Council.

Iran is one of the world's biggest oil and gas exporters but its economy is suffering amid the global financial crisis and international ostracism over the nuclear dispute.

"Iran is standing on 50 percent of the world's energy and should it so decide Europe will have to spend the winter in cold," Hossein Salami, deputy commander of the elite Revolutionary Guards, said in a meeting with war veterans and volunteers in Kerman, according to Fars news agency.

Out standing in his field:

"Our missiles are now able to target any spot in which the conspirators are in, and the country is making advances in all fields," he said.

Iran has tested a number of missiles in recent years that could be used in any war with its arch enemy Israel. Analysts say Israel could try a military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities.

Some European countries have faced difficulties from reliance on gas supplies from Russia, but Iran has struggled to find the cash and technology to develop its energy sector as sanctions and political pressure have kept foreign firms away.

Israel lobbied Washington last week for sanctions against Iran, which imports 40 percent of its gasoline from foreign refineries.

VIENNA - Iran has formally set out its terms for giving up most of its cache of enriched uranium in a confidential document -- and the conditions fall short of what has been demanded by the United States and other world powers.

The document -- seen by The Associated Press on Tuesday -- says Tehran is ready to hand over the bulk of its stockpile, as called for under a deal brokered by the International Atomic Energy Agency and endorsed by the five permanent U.N. Security Council members and Germany.

But Iran adds that it must simultaneously receive fuel rods for its research reactor in return, and that such an exchange must take place on Iranian territory.

The Iranian offer was sure to be rejected by the six powers, which have waited for nearly six months for such an official answer.

The United States and others fear Iran's nuclear program is geared toward making nuclear weapons, while Tehran claims it is simply to provide more power for its growing population. The United Nations has slapped sanctions on Iran for its defiance on nuclear issues.

Ali Asghar Soltanieh, the chief Iranian delegate to the IAEA, told the AP the letter was "formally reflecting" his country's position, which has been expressed to the IAEA and to the media in various forms.

The U.S. and its allies have previously said there can be no significant deviation from the original deal, which would commit Iran to shipping out its nuclear material first and then waiting up to a year for it to be turned into fuel for its reactor, which makes medical isotopes.

The letter -- dated Feb. 18 and addressed to International Atomic Energy Agency chief Yukiya Amano -- says Iran is "still seeking to purchase the required fuel in cash." However, it was unclear how Iran would do that, because there are no stockpiles of fuel specifically made for its reactor.

Iran is ready to exchange its low-enriched uranium for the fuel rods "simultaneously in one package or several packages in the territory of the Islamic Republic of Iran," the letter says.

World powers insist that Iran ship out most of its enriched uranium first then wait for the fuel rods because that would delay Iran's ability to make a nuclear weapon by leaving it with too little material to make a warhead.

But Iran's continued rejection of the deal appears to have worked in its favor.

When the agreement was drawn up nearly six months ago, it foresaw Iran exporting about 1.2 tons of low-enriched material for further enrichment in Russia to near 20 percent and then reprocessing in France into fuel rods. Back then, that would have been about 70 percent of the Iranian stockpile.

But Iran has continued to enrich since, and now has about 2 tons of low-enriched uranium.

That means that even if Iran now agreed to ship the requisite 1.2 tons, it would still be left with about 800 kilograms (1,765 pounds) -- about two-thirds of what is needed to enrich further to produce weapons-grade uranium....

Israel praised an International Atomic Energy Agency report released on Thursday that says Iran may be developing a nuclear warhead.

"The new IAEA report deals more sharply and clearly than its predecessors with the military aspects of Iran's nuclear program," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement released on Friday.

Noting that the report is the first during the term of new IAEA chief Yukiya Amano of Japan, Israel said it "establishes that the agency has a lot of trustworthy information about the past and present activities that testify to the military tendencies of the Iranian program."

Among these activities were the recently declared decisions to enrich uranium to 20 percent and the continued construction of the Qom nuclear facility, kept secret until it was discovered by Western intelligence agencies and made public in recent months.

The UN nuclear agency report suggested for the first time that Teheran had either resumed such work or had never stopped when US intelligence thought it did....

Yet the Fantasy-Based Policymaking continues.

VIENNA (Reuters) - The U.N. nuclear watchdog fears Iran may be working now to develop a nuclear-armed missile, the agency said on Thursday, throwing independent weight behind Western suspicions of an active Iranian weapons program.

In unusually blunt language surfacing under new chief Yukiya Amano, an International Atomic Energy Agency report for the first time suggested Iran was actively chasing nuclear weapons capability rather than merely having done so in the past.

The IAEA seemed to be cautiously going public with suspicions arising from a classified agency analysis leaked in part last year which concluded that Iran has already honed explosives expertise relevant to a workable nuclear weapon.

The report also confirmed Iran had produced its first, small batch of uranium enriched to a higher purity -- 20 percent.

Both developments will intensify pressure on Iran to prove it is not covertly bent on "weaponising" enrichment by allowing unfettered access for IAEA inspectors and investigators, something it rejects in protest at U.N. sanctions.

The United States is already leading a push for the U.N. Security Council to impose a fourth round of sanctions on Iran because of suspicions that it may be developing nuclear weapons, and has received declarations of support from Russia, which has until now been reluctant to expand sanctions.

Tehran says its nuclear program is meant only to yield electricity or radio-isotopes for agriculture or medicine. It took a diametrically opposing view of the report's conclusions.

"The IAEA's new report confirmed Iran's peaceful nuclear activities and the country's non-deviation toward military purposes," Iran's envoy to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, told the state news agency IRNA.

U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said the United States did not understand why Iran had refused to "come to the table and engage constructively" over its nuclear program, adding: "You have to draw some conclusions from that." [...]

IAEA's new chief, Yukiya Amano, is seen as more inclined to confront Iran than his predecessor, Mohamed ElBaradei, who retired on December 1.

"Now we see from (available intelligence) that certain activities may have continued after 2004," said a senior official close to the IAEA. "We want to find out from Iran what they've had to do with these nuclear explosive-related activities."

The U.S. director of National Intelligence concluded last year that Iran would not be technically able to devise a nuclear weapon before 2013. But a new intelligence estimate is due soon....

"Gates Says U.S., Iran Aren't Close to Nuclear Accord," by Viola Gienger and Steve Bryant for Bloomberg, February 6:

(Bloomberg) -- U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he doesn't regard Iran as close to an accord with international powers on the handling of uranium.

"I don't have the sense that we are close to an agreement," Gates said today in Turkey's capital Ankara. He discussed Iran with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said in Munich yesterday that Iran is "approaching a final agreement" on having nuclear fuel produced outside the Islamic Republic. The country is "serious," he said. Mottaki also today said he had talks on a possible deal with International Atomic Energy Agency chief Yukiya Amano at the Munich Security Conference.

The U.S., the other four permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and Germany are working to persuade Iran to give up enrichment of uranium, which could be used to produce fuel or make a bomb. The group, which also includes China, France, Russia, and the U.K., offered a proposal that would allow Iran to swap uranium in return for enriched fuel for a medical reactor.

Iran's response has been "quite disappointing," Gates said. The country continues to resist the IAEA and the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, he said.

Nothing Done

"They have done nothing to reassure the international community that they are prepared to comply with the NPT or stop their progress toward a nuclear weapon," Gates said. "I think that various nations need to think about whether the time has come for a different tack."...

No kidding, really? It is for this incisive analysis that Gates has earned his prominent position.

As Iran assumes an increasingly despotic form at home while expanding its pursuit of nuclear weapons, which the regime feels will be its ultimate guarantee of enduring power, the United States’ response is hampered both by the support Tehran receives from China, and by the conflicted views on U.S. policy toward China within the Obama administration.

On January 6, China blocked a U.S. initiative to impose additional economic sanctions on Iran through the UN Security Council. In New York, Chinese UN ambassador Zhang Yesui announced that “This is not the right time or right moment for sanctions because the diplomatic efforts are still going on.” The Chinese Foreign Ministry repeated this argument in Beijing this week. In fact, several different negotiating tracks have been going on since 2003. During that time, Iran has made steady progress in its weapons research.

Most recently, Tehran had missed the end of the year deadline set by President Obama to respond to his offer of carrots in exchange for halting its nuclear enrichment program. The Obama administration thought it had won a pledge from China to adopt a firmer stance on Iran after Beijing endorsed an International Atomic Energy Agency governing board resolution denouncing Tehran’s recently disclosed Qom uranium enrichment facility. But the November IAEA resolution did not provide for any meaningful action, and indeed it is such action against Iran that China wants to avoid. Beijing knows that words are cheap and can be uttered without meaning. That is its definition of diplomacy.

Thus, the New Year brought to naught the notion of U.S.-China cooperation on strategic issues that the Obama administration had launched during the summer. This is not how things were supposed to be. In a joint July op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner described the “New Strategic and Economic Dialogue” with China that would take place later that month. The S&ED was an expansion of the Strategic Economic Dialogue (SED) started by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson during the Bush administration. It was designed to put control of China policy in his department’s hands. As CEO of Goldman Sachs, Paulson had been deeply involved in financial deals with China and did not want to rock the boat.

The new Obama arrangement brought the State Department (but not the Pentagon) into the diplomatic process. In theory, the S&ED would balance the business interests that had dominated China policy with a true strategic element that could look at what Beijing was doing with the capital, technology and production capacity that the business model had given it. The core concept remained, however, to forge “a positive, cooperative and comprehensive relationship with Beijing” as it expanded into a global power. As Clinton and Geithner wrote:

“Simply put, few global problems can be solved by the U.S. or China alone. And few can be solved without the U.S. and China together…..the solution to nonproliferation challenges turn in large measure on cooperation between the U.S. and China.”

There was no mention of North Korea or Iran by name in regard to nuclear proliferation, but it has been clear for many years that Washington is reluctant to press Beijing on issues like the trade deficit because it wants Chinese help controlling the rogue states that Beijing supports. At the same time, though, the U.S. is afraid to press China too hard on the rogue states out of fear of retaliation against American business interests.

In his testimony to the Senate and House foreign relations committees last October, David Loevinger, the Treasury’s Executive Secretary and Senior Coordinator for China Affairs & the Strategic and Economic Dialogue, said, “We will continue to encourage the Chinese to strengthen efforts to counter the threat of North Korea and Iran’s nuclear weapons program.” But that was his only mention of non-proliferation efforts in his long, prepared statement that concentrated on the Chinese business model of recycling the U.S. trade deficit into purchases of mounting Treasury debt.

While Beijing has been blocking actions by others against Iran, its aid to Tehran have been increasing. China-Iran trade reached $29 billion 2008, a nearly 40 percent increase over 2007. China imports oil from Iran and pays for it with exports of manufactured goods and equipment. Over 100 state-owned Chinese corporations operate in Iran, with investments concentrated on energy development (both oil and natural gas) and infrastructure construction, including dams, airfields, shipyards, and ports. China is mining titanium and planning new rail lines. Beijing is undermining UN and U.S. sanctions rather than being held accountable. China is being allowed to profit from its policy rather than being made to pay a price for supporting Tehran.

This seems unlikely to change. The Treasury, with its business model of foreign relations, still seems in charge of China policy. The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control is responsible for enforcing the sanctions on Iran and on those who do business with the Tehran regime, yet current economic sanctions on Iran are not even being enforced when it comes to Chinese firms trading in the United States. According to a recent Wall Street Journal report:

“Chinese companies banned from doing business in the U.S. for allegedly selling missile technology to Iran continue to do a brisk trade with American companies, according to an analysis of shipping records.”

Of particular note was state-owned China Precision Machinery Import-Export Corp., which made nearly 300 illegal shipments to U.S. firms since a ban was imposed on CPMIEC and its affiliates in mid-2006. The WSJ reported:

“The CPMIEC shipments, worth millions of dollars, include everything from anchors and drilling equipment to automobile parts and toys. In many cases, CPMIEC acted as a shipping intermediary — activity also banned under a 2006 presidential order.”

President Obama continues to say that it would be unacceptable for Iran to develop a nuclear weapons capability. But the policy of relying on China to constrain Tehran is as much a failure today as it was during the Bush Administration. A large factor in that failure over the last seven years has been to trust the Treasury Department to get the job done. The Iran threat and its Chinese sponsor are national security issues and should be entrusted to departments that have national security as their prime function. In the end, it will likely be the Pentagon that will have to settle the score.

VIENNA -- Iran is close to clinching a deal to clandestinely import 1,350 tons of purified uranium ore from Kazakhstan, according to an intelligence report obtained by The Associated Press on Tuesday. Diplomats said the assessment was heightening international concern about Tehran's nuclear activities.

Such a purified uranium ore deal would be significant because Tehran appears to be running out of the material, which it needs to feed its uranium enrichment program.

The report was drawn up by a member nation of the International Atomic Energy agency and provided to the AP on condition of that the country not be identified because of the confidential nature of the information.

Such imports are banned by the U.N. Security Council.

In New York, Burkina Faso's U.N. Ambassador Michel Kafando, a co-chair of the Security Council's Iran sanctions committee, referred questions Tuesday about a potential deal between Iran and Kazakhstan to his sanctions adviser, Zongo Saidou.

Saidou told the AP that, as far as he knew, none of the U.N.'s member nations have alerted the committee about any such allegations. "We don't have any official information yet regarding this kind of exchange between the two countries," Saidou said. "I don't have any information; I don't have any proof."

A senior U.N. official said the agency was aware of the intelligence report's assessment but could not yet draw conclusions. He demanded anonymity for discussing confidential information. A Western diplomat from a member of the IAEA's 35-nation board said the report was causing "concern" among countries that have seen it and generating "intelligence chatter." The diplomat also requested anonymity for discussing intelligence information.

A two-page summary of the report obtained by the AP said deal could be completed within weeks. It said Tehran was willing to pay $450 million, or close to 315 million euros, for the shipment.

The price is high because of the secret nature of the deal and due to Iran's commitment to keep secret the elements supplying the material," said the summary. An official of the country that drew up the report said "elements" referred to state employees acting on their own without approval of the Kazakh government.

After-hours calls put in to offices of Kazatomprom, the Kazak state uranium company, in Kazakhstan and Moscow, were not answered Tuesday. Iranian nuclear officials also did not pick up their telephones.

Purified ore, or uranium oxide, is processed into a uranium gas, which is then spun and re-spun to varying degrees of enrichment. Low enriched uranium is used for nuclear fuel, and upper-end high enriched uranium for nuclear weapons.

Iran is under three sets of U.N. Security Council sanctions for refusing to freeze its enrichment program and related activities that could be used to make nuclear weapons.

Tehran denies such aspirations, saying it wants to enrich only to fuel an envisaged network of power reactors.

Confidential intelligence documents obtained by The Times show that Iran is working on testing a key final component of a nuclear bomb.

The notes, from Iran's most sensitive military nuclear project, describe a four-year plan to test a neutron initiator, the component of a nuclear bomb that triggers an explosion. Foreign intelligence agencies date them to early 2007, four years after Iran was thought to have suspended its weapons programme.

An Asian intelligence source last week confirmed to The Times that his country also believed that weapons work was being carried out as recently as 2007 -- specifically, work on a neutron initiator.

The technical document describes the use of a neutron source, uranium deuteride, which independent experts confirm has no possible civilian or military use other than in a nuclear weapon. Uranium deuteride is the material used in Pakistan's bomb, from where Iran obtained its blueprint.

"Although Iran might claim that this work is for civil purposes, there is no civil application," said David Albright, a physicist and president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, which has analysed hundreds of pages of documents related to the Iranian programme. "This is a very strong indicator of weapons work."

The documents have been seen by intelligence agencies from several Western countries, including Britain. A senior source at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed that they had been passed to the UN's nuclear watchdog.

A Foreign and Commonwealth Office spokeswoman said yesterday: "We do not comment on intelligence, but our concerns about Iran's nuclear programme are clear. Obviously this document, if authentic, raises serious questions about Iran's intentions."

Responding to The Times' findings, an Israeli government spokesperson said: "Israel is increasingly concerned about the state of the Iranian nuclear programme and the real intentions that may lie behind it."...

Mr Fitzpatrick said: "Is this the smoking gun? That's the question people should be asking. It looks like the smoking gun. This is smoking uranium."

The decade-long attempt to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons may have entered the final round on Sunday when Iran announced to the world it intended to build ten new uranium enrichment sites.

“This is really a statement of defiance,” a former senior Israeli atomic official told The Wall Street Journal, “telling the world we are going to go ahead with our nuclear program.”

The Iranian government’s statement came only two days after the world’s major powers condemned Iran’s nuclear program, which, despite Iranian denials, is believed to be producing nuclear weapons. China and Russia joined the United States, France, Britain and Germany to support an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) resolution ordering Iran to stop construction on the uranium enrichment plant near Qom, a secret facility whose existence President Obama revealed last September.

Due to the international criticism, Iranians are now threatening to pull out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and reduce cooperation with the IAEA, the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog. North Korea is the only other country ever to have pulled out of the treaty.

According to news reports, the Iranian decision to thumb their nose at the U.N. and world opinion and construct new nuclear fuel refinement facilities was made Sunday evening at a cabinet meeting chaired by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinijad. The Iranians will start work on five of the new sites within two months and at an unspecified future time on the remaining five.

It is believed the reason for the extra facilities is to allow Iran to build more nuclear bombs. One military analyst says U.N. weapons inspectors and the U.S. Department of Defense are of the opinion Iran currently has enough enriched fuel for one nuclear weapon. Iran would like to have several more in order to present itself as a “credible threat.”

The Iranian announcement signals a defeat for President Obama’s ‘soft’ approach towards the Islamic Republic’s leadership. In an interview with Dubai-based Al-Arabiya satellite television network last January, Obama said Iran’s leaders would find the extended hand of diplomacy if they “unclenched” their fists.

“As I said in my inauguration speech, if countries like Iran are willing to unclench their fist, they will find an extended hand from us,” Obama said.

But as early as March there were already signs that Iran was in no mood to unclench and drop the rock it was holding in the form of its nuclear weapons program. That month, President Obama released a video, wishing the Iranians a happy New Year, which, in Iran, falls on the first day of spring. In return for his friendly overture, the American president received from the Iranian government nothing but a demand for apologies for America’s past transgressions, real or imagined, against Iran.

Sunday’s statement simply proves what most have suspected all along: One cannot talk to the Iranian leaders and that they are simply stringing out negotiations to complete their nuclear arms program. And the fact the Iranians still celebrate the 1979 American embassy seizure every November, a flagrant and criminal breach of international law, shows they do not want to talk to the United States in particular and are still willing to flout international norms.

Essentially, Iran’s leaders are religious fanatics who believe they have been chosen by God to establish a Shiite hegemony over the majority Sunni Islamic world and then, hopefully, over the whole planet. Of the world’s one billion Muslims, about 220 million are minority Shiites, of whom the largest number, about 62 million, live in Iran. Pakistan contains the next largest community of Shiites at 33 million, while India is third with 30 million and Iraq fourth with 18 million.

Iran’s mullah regime sees possessing nuclear weapons as instrumental to its plans for world domination. Nuclear arms would also add significant muscle to Iran’s security in a part of the world where any sign of weakness or vulnerability could be dangerous. Iranians have not forgotten how Iraq took advantage of Iran’s revolutionary turmoil to launch a devastating eight-year war against it in 1980. And like Russia with its former Eastern European satellites, Iran would also use nuclear weapons to intimidate weaker neighbors.

The Asia Times columnist, Spengler (a literary pseudonym), gives another reason why Iran is not afraid to seek confrontation over its nuclear weapons program. Iranian demographics have sunk to West German levels of about 1.6 children per woman, which would make waging a war in 20 years impossible. Iran currently has enough young men to embark on a military adventure, whether internally for nuclear weapons acquisition or externally against the Sunni world, while in twenty years it won’t.

Iran’s heavily-subsidized economy is also imploding. Like Argentina with its 1982 Falkland Islands’ invasion and Germany in 1939, economically it is now or never for Iran to make a grab for the ring. In a year’s time it may be too late, especially if oil prices drop dramatically again. Besides, again like Argentina, a military adventure would probably cause those Iranian people actively opposed to the regime to put aside their economic and political grievances and rally around the country’s leadership in nationalistic pride.

But if Iran wants a fight, it will most likely get one. The Islamic regime’s Holocaust-denying leadership has openly stated it wants to erase Israel from the map. Facing such a naked threat to their country’s existence, one military publication states the Israelis are now openly discussing using a missile attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. While Israel’s Jericho missiles can carry nuclear warheads, they also can be equipped with a conventional warhead. An attack by Israeli warplanes is also a possibility.

The Israelis already have American backing for such a strike if negotiations fail, as they appear to have. American Vice-President Joe Biden said in an ABC interview last July America would not prevent an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. And since the only other option would be a nuclear-armed Iran, the Israelis will now likely ensure this last round ends in a knockout.