Iran's nuclear issue sees more drama

Now entering its eighth year, the program pits the classic rogue regime, the Islamic Republic of Iran, in a frenzied bid to gain a nuclear weapons program, against the determined hand-ringing and “deep concern” of the international community. The season premiere opens at the U.N. in two weeks when U.S. President Barack Obama, Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and scores of other leaders come to New York to address the General Assembly and stake out their positions on nuclear proliferation.

America's Ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the Vienna-based watchdog group, correctly set the tone by stating that Iran now has sufficient material to produce a nuclear weapon. Amb. Glyn Davies added that Iran's “ongoing enrichment activities moves Iran closer to a dangerously and destabilizing breakout capacity.”

These were the toughest remarks so far during the Obama Administration concerning Iran's technical capacity to build a atomic bomb, and added to the anxiety that Teheran is really not negotiating seriously but instead buying time while playing the international community for a patsy.

The Security Council permanent members plus Germany negotiating group, namely Britain, China, France, Russia, the United States and Germany, have consistently pursued the negotiating track in parallel with the threatened stick of further sanctions on Iran. But previous slaps on the wrist from the Security Council never have thwarted the Atomic Ayatollahs in their pursuit of the nuclear genie. Tehran has ignored five previous U.N. resolutions concerning its atomic program and is unlikely to change course now as it nears the nuclear goalpost.

Even A.Q. Khan, Pakistan's notorious nuclear scientist, has admitted helping the Iranian atomic program

But there are fascinating twists in the storyline since last year. President Barack Obama has offered to negotiate with Tehran without preconditions and earlier in the year set a September deadline for Iran to negotiate seriously or face renewed calls for economic sanctions. Obama's Springtime offer essentially allowed Tehran's scientists a further six months of uninterrupted work on their nuclear program. Since that time too, Ahmadinejad's own authority has been challenged in the bitter aftermath of Iran's fraudulent Presidential elections.

Now come September we confront our own deadline but with some definite changes in the political landscape.

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