This apparently was the big breakthrough Iran’s President had been claiming was imminent:

Iran has completed a new phase in its Arak heavy-water reactor plant, a presidential official said on Saturday, referring to part of Iran’s atomic programme which the West fears is aimed at producing bombs.

The official said President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would give a speech later in the day “announcing that the heavy-water project has become operational”.

A heavy water plant is a significant development. In nuclear power plants that use heavy water, unenriched uranium can be employed, as opposed to light water reactor plants which require enriched uranium. More significant however, is that spent uranium fuel from heavy water reactors can be processed to produce plutonium, the other element other than the U-235 isotope of uranium that can be used to build the core components of atomic weapons.

So, this is nothing to take lightly. However, Iran is not presently in a position to make plutonium. For that you need a heavy water reactor. Iran has a heavy water reactor in production, but it is not scheduled to be completed until 2009. In other words, there is no imminent threat of Iran constructing nuclear weapons using the reprocessed spent fuel from a heavy water reactor. It will take time to run the plant long enough to produce enough spent fuel for reprocessing into plutonium. In the meantime, Iran’s heavy water plant and its heavy water reactor would be easy targets for an aerial assault by missiles and or bombs.

So why is Iran announcing this now?

The short answer is to put pressure on the UN Security Council members to forego sanctions and agree to Iran’s terms for negotiations regarding its nuclear program. Yes, there are PR advantages in the Islamic world to announcing this now, but its real purpose is to split the members of the Security Council so that they do not give the United States what it wants: sanctions, with the possibility of future military action, against Iran.

You see, what Iran really wants from any negotiations is the one thing the United States under George Bush will always be unwilling to give them. Recognition of their prominent position in the Middle East (official or otherwise) and a promise to halt all efforts directed at regime change. In short, they want security guarantees from the US (or the Europeans, Russia and China) that Iran will not become the next war promulgated against the members of Bush’s infamous Axis of Evil.

This is essentially the same objective Iran had when it first approached the Bush administration shortly after the Iraqi invasion with a proposal to negotiate a settlement of their nuclear program. No doubt, they felt their position was much weaker back then, and they would have made many more concessions to get a security guarantee from the US, but we’ll never really know since their efforts to negotiate with the US regarding the Iranian nuclear program were summarily dismissed out of hand by the Bush administration.

The post-9-11 period was the most promising moment for a U.S. opening to Iran since the two countries cut their relations in 1979. But neoconservatives had no intention of letting the engagement initiative get off the ground, and they were well-positioned to ensure that it didn’t. […]

As the United States was beginning its military occupation of Iraq in April, the Iranians were at work on a bold and concrete proposal to negotiate with the United States on the full range of issues in the U.S.-Iran conflict. Iran’s then-ambassador to France, Sadegh Kharrazi, the nephew of then–Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi, drafted the document, which was approved by the highest authorities in the Iranian system, including the Supreme National Security Council and Supreme Leader Khamenei himself, according to a letter accompanying the document from the Swiss ambassador in Tehran, Tim Guldimann, who served as an intermediary. Parsi says senior Iranian national security officials confirmed in interviews in August 2004 that Khamenei was “directly involved in the document.”

The proposal, a copy of which is in the author’s possession, offered a dramatic set of specific policy concessions Tehran was prepared to make in the framework of an overall bargain on its nuclear program, its policy toward Israel, and al-Qaeda. It also proposed the establishment of three parallel working groups to negotiate “road maps” on the three main areas of contention — weapons of mass destruction, “terrorism and regional security,” and “economic cooperation.” […]

To meet the U.S. concern about an Iranian nuclear weapons program, the document offered to accept much tighter controls by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in exchange for “full access to peaceful nuclear technology.” It proposed “full transparency for security [assurance] that there are no Iranian endeavors to develop or possess WMD” and “full cooperation with IAEA based on Iranian adoption of all relevant instruments (93+2 and all further IAEA protocols).” That was a reference to new IAEA protocols that would guarantee the IAEA access to any facility, whether declared or undeclared, on short notice — something Iran had been urged to adopt but was resisting in the hope of getting something in return. The adoption of those protocols would have made it significantly more difficult for Iran to carry on a secret nuclear program without the risk of being caught.

The Iranian proposal also offered a sweeping reorientation of Iranian policy toward Israel. In the past, Iran had attacked those Arab governments that had supported the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and Tehran had supported armed groups that opposed it. But the document offered “acceptance of the Arab League Beirut declaration (Saudi initiative, two-states approach).” The March 2002 declaration had embraced the land-for-peace principle and a comprehensive peace with Israel in return for Israel’s withdrawal to 1967 lines. That position would have aligned Iran’s policy with that of the moderate Arab regimes.

The document also offered a “stop of any material support to Palestinian opposition groups (Hamas, Jihad, etc.) from Iranian territory” and “pressure on these organizations to stop violent actions against civilians within borders of 1967.” Finally it proposed “action on Hizbollah to become a mere political organization within Lebanon.” That package of proposals was a clear bid for removal of Iran from the list of state sponsors of terrorism.[…]

The list of Iranian aims also included an end to U.S. “hostile behavior and rectification of status of Iran in the U.S.,” including its removal from the “axis of evil” and the “terrorism list,” and an end to all economic sanctions against Iran. But it also asked for “[r]ecognition of Iran’s legitimate security interests in the region with according [appropriate] defense capacity.” […]

The outcome of discussion among the principals — Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Powell — was that State was instructed to ignore the proposal and to reprimand Guldimann for having passed it on. “It was literally a few days,” Leverett recalls, between the arrival of the Iranian proposal and the dispatch of the message of displeasure with the Swiss ambassador.

Oh what could have been. Now, of course, Iran’s hand has been strengthened immeasurably by America’s own demonstrated weaknesses: the continuing quagmire in Iraq which is devouring our military and the inability of Israel to eliminate Iran’s ally in Lebanon, Hezbollah, despite its numerical and technological superiority. American influence across the Middle East is at its lowest point in decades, while Iran’s star in its ascendancy.

However, while Iran’s heavy water plant is hardly news to our intelligence services (hard to miss a facility that big with a spy satellite), this is still a very dicey game being played by Ayatollah Khamenie and President Ahmadinejad. They are making the assumption that Bush, Cheney and their Merry Band of Neocons in the Iranian Directorate at the Pentagon, do not have the wherewithal militarily, diplomatically or politically to engage in another war in the Middle East, nor to deal with the inevitable fallout which would result from such an attack: crude oil prices skyrocketing and worldwide economic turmoil as a result (to name but a few of the likely consequences).

The trouble with Iran’s approach is that they continue to fail to understand the dynamic at play within the Bush administration. These neoconservatives are people who are devoted to their stratagems and beliefs. They are true ideologues who believe that despite past failures, the next US military intervention in the region will prove them right all along. Indeed, some of them may see the chaos in Iraq as a success: democracy and freedom are a messy business after all, to paraphrase that eminent political philosopher, Donald Rumsfeld. They are also convinced that this time, ground forces won’t be needed; that we can just bomb the crap out of Iran without the necessity to employ significant numbers of boots on the ground, if any.

These are individuals (both Bush and Cheney) who do not accept information that doesn’t already square with their preconceived notions. Cheney and Bush are convinced that Iran is a great danger to our national security, and nothing our allies or intelligence services say to the contrary has any effect on their thinking. The rollout of Rove’s strategy for a GOP victory which is serving up heavy doses of Iran as the next Evildoer to be taken down is only being helped by these bellicose pronouncements from Teheran.

Because in the end, nothing the UN Security Council or our European allies do will matter in the least. I fear that The only chance to prevent war is a Republican defeat in November, and even that may be no more wistful thinking on my part. But certainly, anything which aids Republicans politically this campaign season makes war with Iran more inevitable.

Its a shame that the Iranian leadership do not understand this point: when dealing with the US Republican leadership they are dealing with megalomaniacs and madmen.