Watch Iran’s Nuclear Moves

For years, the United States unsuccessfully argued with Russia that its construction of a 1,000-megawatt light-water reactor in Bushehr, Iran, would enhance the likelihood of Iran developing atomic weapons. Last month, a Bush administration official said the Russians had begun to share U.S. misgivings. Now, U.N. inspectors’ discovery of a fast-advancing uranium enrichment program -- not at Bushehr but at Natanz, near Isfahan in central Iran -- adds an exclamation point to those fears.

Iran insists its nuclear program is peaceful and designed just to make electricity, a hard claim to swallow from such an oil- and natural gas-rich nation. But in contrast with North Korea, which is thought to already have one or two atomic weapons and which recently expelled U.N. inspectors and restarted a nuclear reactor that had been sealed, Iran invited in the U.N. officials and said it wanted to ease international concerns about its programs.

If that’s true, it should accept the request of International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei that Iran allow more intrusive and more regular monitoring of its nuclear program.

Iran signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which allows it to pursue nuclear technology for peaceful purposes, monitored by the IAEA. However, because Iran never made public the uranium enrichment plant near Isfahan, inspectors never looked at it -- a weakness of the inspection process. It was a political opposition group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, that blew the whistle.

The U.S. response has been muted, not just because the White House is intensely focused on its battle at the United Nations and pending war with Iraq but because it needs Tehran.

Despite President Bush’s inclusion of it in his “axis of evil,” Iran accepted tens of thousands of Afghan refugees after the U.S. drove out the Taliban government. It also sponsors the largest Shiite Muslim opposition movement against Iraq, the country it battled in a 1980-88 war. Its internal politics continue to be a fight between the hard-line mullahs who succeeded Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and the more liberal elected government of President Mohammad Khatami. The U.S. has to be careful not to tip the balance back to the hard-liners.

Iran is trying to improve relations with the European Union; EU member nations should insist that Tehran allow more inspections and volunteer more information about its program. Russia, despite its differences with the Bush administration over Iraq and the U.S. insistence on pressing ahead with missile defense, should understand the dangers of having another nation with nuclear weapons in its neighborhood. As with North Korea, this dilemma should not be left to the United States to solve.