All still to play for

摘要

If Iran's nuclear ambitions are as peaceful as it claims, it is doing its best to disguise it. Faced with its determination to resume uranium enrichment (a skill also needed for bomb-making), Britain, France and Germany have called an emergency meeting of the 35-nation board of the UN'S nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), for February 2nd. They hope to have Iran's past safeguards violations reported speedily to the UN Security Council. By breaking the agency's seals last week on its pilot uranium-enrichment plant at Natanz, Iran has also alarmed Russia and China. Meanwhile, Israel's acting prime minister, Ehud Olmert, mindful of the desire of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to "wipe Israel off the map", this week said that "under no circumstances" could his country allow a hostile Iran to develop nuclear weapons. For the first time, Egypt and Saudi Arabia also called publicly on Iran to drop its nuclear defiance.