The crazy thing about the Iranian nuclear ‘quagmire’ is the simple fact that every waking moment presents a new set of challenges, and uncertainties about the leadership’s position on nuclear weapons, either regarding its enrichment or any subject matter in between. Just when you think President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is on the verge of agreeing to bilateral United Nations requirements(or yielding to sanctions), it flips the page. The last time I checked, Iran was two seconds a way from accepting a deal to swap enriched uranium for nuclear fuel. Never mind the technical details involved, the moral here is that the world sits perturbed, and rather grudgingly, because of what Mahmoud Ahmadinejad could be really planning, assuming he is planning something. Either way he has managed to stay relevant for so long, and that is not because he is blowing smoke around all of us. It was this same defiance (or arrogance) that sent millions of Iranians marching through Tehran after the much publicized post election drama. Launching satellite rockets carrying an "experimental capsules" are hardly the formula to win any friends, even in Iran, and not presumptuous on my part to assume that the Obama administration will not be the only guys to condemn it.
At the core of the problem however, Iran insists that its nuclear development and rocket programs are entirely peaceful, an assertion that you will be hard-pressed to find even a third grader to believe it. The latest deal in this conversation came last year with the agreement between Iran, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the so-called P5+1 - the US, Russia, China, UK, France plus Germany for Iran to send about 70% of its low-enriched uranium to Russia and France where it would be processed into fuel for a research reactor.
Again, the very fact that you can’t take Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s word to any bank makes the dialogue a lot more mystifying and suspicious, that’s if you ask me. Obviously U.N. sanctions will not put a dent in the hard-line Iranian ambition, and you can bet that not too many people around the world can sleep peacefully until a pragmatic resolve emerges sooner than later. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has become the noisy next door neighbor you wonder who gave him permission to live on your block. You will pay anything for him to move away, except that the only reason he came on the block was to be the most unruly neighbor you’ve ever known.
Time may tell, but that is not a product an apprehensive world has ample supply of, especially when Ahmadinejad is the subject of the conversation.
