A chilling look at nuclear Iran

In the news business, there’s timing and then there’s Timing.

You do a story, and before it gets published or broadcast, the wind beneath its wings dies out. OBE, it’s called -- Overtaken by Events.

But once in a while, events coalesce to give your story added punch. “Frontline/World” has a show tonight that fits the latter category big time: a tough-minded look at whether Iran is developing nuclear weapons and, if not, why that country appears to be playing such hide-and-seek games with United Nations nuclear inspectors.

The episode comes the same week that a showdown is set for Geneva between Iranians and Europeans over the Islamic republic’s nuclear intentions.

Not a party to the talks, the Americans will be offstage whispering to the Europeans not to back down and to warn the Iranians that if the nuclear issue goes to the U.N. Security Council, the results may not be pleasant for Tehran. If the Iranians walk out, global tensions will increase.

Adding to the geo-drama is word from Tehran that the nation’s Guardian Council has just disqualified more than 1,000 candidates from the June 17 election, seemingly ensuring that the next president will be a hard-liner.

Titled “Iran: Going Nuclear,” the “Frontline” episode has BBC reporter Paul Kenyon accompanying a U.N. inspection team into Iran.

Kenyon is the British equivalent of the young Geraldo Rivera when the latter was aggressive, smart and unafraid to take his camera where others dared not go. In other words, before celebrity made him bigger than the stories he covers.

“Going Nuclear” provides top-notch reporting, interviews with high-level U.N., U.S. and Iranian officials, and a heart-pounding portrayal of the menace that the inspectors and film crew are exposed to as they are watched and harassed whenever they appear close to unmasking Iran’s true intentions.

It is all ominously reminiscent of Iraq and U.N. inspections there: the freshly painted facilities, the satellite photos, the parsing of words by local officials, the reasonable-sounding denials by sweet-faced scientists.

The U.N. is not buying. “I believe they’ve tried to conceal their program and their activities,” one of the inspectors tells Kenyon.

Iranian officials insist that the nuclear program, unknown to the world until 18 months ago, is meant simply to provide electricity. Maybe so, but the plant that is building a power generator can quickly change into making bombs.

The Iranians have anticipated airstrikes aimed at their nuclear facilities spread around the countryside. Missile sites and antiaircraft stations are not far away.

Anti-American slogans are ubiquitous in Tehran. Interviews with common Iranians suggest that the nuclear program is a matter of national pride -- not the kind of thing from which a country, Arab or Western, can easily back down.

And if that isn’t frightening enough, Kenyon interviews Ali Akbar Salehi, once Iran’s top nuclear negotiator and now an academic. Salehi tells Kenyon that the program is strictly peaceful, spars with him about why, if so, Iran went to such lengths to deceive outsiders, and then, in an almost matter-of-fact tone, says Iran is not afraid of the United States.

It’s all very polite and professorial, chillingly so.

“Never in [the] history of Iran, Iran has been as strong as it is today, OK, on its own scale,” Salehi says. “And never America has been at its weakest point, on its own scale, as it is today....

“So if there is to be a confrontation, then probably this is the time.”

If it weren’t already the trademark of that other newsmagazine, the impatient tick-tick-tick of a watch would fit perfectly here.

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‘Frontline/World’

Iran: Going Nuclear

Where: KCET

When: 9 to 10 tonight

Ratings: Not rated

Executive producer David Fanning. Executive director Sharon Tiller. Series editor Stephen Talbot.