After failing to discover WMDs in Iraq, President Bush’s “axis of evil” thesis has got a fresh lease of life. First the North Koreans, and now the Iranians, have been indicted as pursuing nuclear weapons programmes, either overtly or covertly. The North Korean imbroglio and the Iranian cover-up could not have come at a better time for the Bush administration as it hunts in vain for incriminating evidence in Iraq.

However, North Korea and Iran present two entirely different cases for capping their nuclear programmes. The US would do well to keep this mind, in its engagement with Iran. The North Korean regime is by all accounts completely unreliable even after promises and guarantees are extracted from it. Iran too has employed deception as regards its nuclear weaponization programme, but this is not an extraordinary occurrence. The difference from North Korea lies is in the possible amenability of the Iranian regime to positive overtures from the international community, particularly the US. Having said that, it is also important to distinguish between the hardliners and moderates in Iran. While the latter still dominate the government, the US could place them in jeopardy by unnecessary sabre-rattling.

What needs to be understood is that the Iranian nuclear programme is an area of engagement between the moderates and the hardliners in the country, with this programme having come out into the open. Indeed, it may not be a bad thing after all from the viewpoint of the moderates under Khatami, who could probably use the nuclear programme as a bargaining chip with both the hardliners as well as the outside world. Subterfuge was necessitated, in part, because their equations with the hardliners demanded it, and partly because Iran’s technology suppliers needed to be shielded from international scrutiny. Again, it is probably worth examining whether the moderates are using the IAEA inspections to apply the brakes on Iran’s nuclear weapons programme.

Indeed, the game plan, if it could be called that, of the Iranian moderates, seems to take into account a variety of factors. By disclosing that their uranium enrichment projects goes back earlier than what had been previously declared to UN inspectors, and by not providing plausible explanations for either their technology or sources of nuclear materials, Iran has indirectly implicated Russia, China, Pakistan and North Korea as having assisted its weapons programme. With the US engaged in the “war on terror”, to cry wolf too loudly at the present juncture, would have detrimental effects on American relations with the first three countries. Also, the moderates could let the hardline clergy in Iran challenge the US presence in Iraq if the US were to up the ante on the Iranian nuclear programme. In addition, there is also the issue of handing over the al-Qaeda suspects in Iranian custody that the US has been demanding for some time.

That the Iranian policy is not confrontational reflects Iran’s keen awareness of the current geopolitical situation. With a substantial American military presence in its neighbourhood and an implicit Israeli threat of military strikes against its nuclear facilities as happened to Iraq in 1981, the Iranian moderates have made several attempts to engage the US. They have made active overtures to the US-supported Iraqi Governing Council, and developed informal contacts with the Americans since the “war on terror” began. The 31 October deadline announced by the IAEA for Iran to declare its full cooperation with inspections and the subsequent Iranian walkout, need not lead to a confrontation.

Regardless of the question of which faction controls Iran’s nuclear programme, informed opinion assesses that an Iranian nuclear bomb is at least two years away, if not more. This provides ample time for the US and Iran to work out a constructive engagement, unpalatable as it is, to hardliners in both countries. The US, in the short run, needs to avoid triggering a Shia backlash in Iraq; in the long run, it would do well to support the moderates in Iran, thus gaining an important ally in the region, and reversing decades of unfruitful confrontation. Iran, on the other hand, must realize that a nuclear weapons programme is unsustainable, and international sanctions would only put further pressure on its already weak economy, and damage its growing links with the international community.