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In early July, two events raised some optimism about the prospects for peacefully resolving the crisis over Iran’s nuclear program -- the pronouncement of the Director General (DG) of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) concerning the centrifuge enrichment program and the feeling that Iran, in its negotiations with the IAEA and the Europeans, had made significant concessions on the question of IAEA inspections.  To buttress the impression that things are getting better, the IAEA has been promulgating several illusions.

The first of these was the press statement on July 9 by the DG, Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, in which he asserted: "On Iran's enrichment programme, our inspectors were there last week and saw a slowing in the process of commissioning new cascades.  This is something again I welcome…" In fact, the only thing that can be gathered from this statement is that while the rate of progress is somewhat slower than expected, Iran has been persisting in its ongoing effort to construct centrifuges and feed into them material for enrichment.  This may be good news, but only for those who are desperately searching for anything than can be remotely construed as good news.

In another part of his press statement, ElBaradei went on to say: "Our coming visit [to Iran] could be very important in that respect because if we see a sincere effort by Iran to work on resolving the outstanding issues, if we see, hopefully, a freeze by Iran of the level of enrichment cascades they are building, I'm sure this would influence, as I said, the action of the parties to enter into negotiations."

That passage feeds three other illusions. One concerns the "outstanding issues" to which references have been made time and again in the reports of the Director General to the IAEA Board of Governors.  These issues include, inter alia, research and development on advanced P-2 type centrifuge machines, casting and machining uranium hemispheres (applicable in nuclear weapons), plutonium experiments, the high enriched uranium particles apparently found in military installations, and so on.  ElBaradei seems to suggest that a great advance will be made if all these issues are satisfactorily resolved. But he fails to acknowledge that even if all the issues are resolved, that would do nothing to halt Iran's program or to allay fears that Iran is developing nuclear weapons.

Another illusion is the hope that Iran will freeze the number of enrichment cascades it is building. Given official Iranian statements to the contrary, there is absolutely no basis for this hope.

The statement also promotes the illusion that if such a freeze were nevertheless implemented, it would in some way amount to a termination of the enrichment program.  That is also misleading. Freezing the number of cascades while letting them proceed with actual enrichment would certainly slow the rate at which enriched uranium is produced, but it would not in and of itself cancel the end product.  The only reason to argue otherwise would be to justify Dr. ElBaradei's statement that it is useless not to let Iran proceed with enrichment, using its limited number of cascades.

Finally, since the promulgation in the mid-1990's of the Additional Protocol, the IAEA has been consistently promoting the serious illusion that application of the Protocol can provide assurances about the absence of undeclared nuclear materials and activities. The most recent instance of this was the Director General's report to his Board of Governors on May 23, 2007, in which he wrote: "As previously stated, unless Iran addresses the long outstanding verification issues, and implements the Additional Protocol and the required transparency measures, the Agency will not be able to fully reconstruct the history of Iran’s nuclear programme and provide assurances about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran or about the exclusively peaceful nature of that programme."

The Additional Protocol and the "required transparency measures" are undoubtedly important tools, but they cannot provide assurances about the absence of anything, particularly in such a large country as Iran, with its history of concealment, cheating and lying about almost anything related to its nuclear program.  Who would be so bold as to state unequivocally that Iran's intentions are purely peaceful?  And even if that were argued with respect to one regime in Iran, who would guarantee that a future regime would not use a hoard of low-enriched uranium to quickly produce military-grade enriched uranium?  With Iran's record of animosity towards the US and Israel, and the vituperous statements made by Iranian leaders, the burden of proof that Iran’s intentions are peaceful is very high, indeed.

There is, however, another issue in addition to the gullibility of those willing to endorse the illusions fed by the IAEA and some of the world press.  That issue is the underlying unwillingness of certain countries to confront Iran head-on and demand that it cease and dismantle its nuclear enrichment program as a first step toward the complete abandonment of any military nuclear ambitions or intentions to build the potential for a military nuclear program.  Some of those countries have probably decided, on cost-benefit basis, that it would be better for them to ensure access to energy sources even if Iran gets nuclear weapons than to jeopardize their energy supplies in order to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons.  Other countries simply do not care what happens. Indeed, there are only a few countries that care deeply, but they have not been able to mobilize the international community to bring the necessary pressure to bear on Iran.

This reality is manifest in the international timetables applied to dealings with Iran.  Instead of deciding in advance on sanctions and warning that they will be imposed if and when Iran fails to meet the deadlines set by the Security Council, the deadlines come and go, consultations begin slowly, and each hint of compromise is used to delay the next sanctions decision.

Meanwhile, Iran's uranium enrichment program marches on.  When Iran reaches its target, aided by the lack of international will to confront it, those who now advocate more active measures to prevent that outcome will blame the IAEA for its part in the fiasco.  And those whose passivity contributed to that outcome will have no one to blame but themselves.