IN AN admirably straightforward report Monday, the International Atomic Energy Agency asserted that Iran has failed to answer crucial questions about documents that suggest a military dimension to its nuclear program. At the least, the IAEA report gives the lie to Iran's claim that it has fully cooperated with the agency.
As a United Nations watchdog agency and not a policy-making body, the IAEA has properly done only what it has a mandate to do. It stipulated Iran's lack of transparency and called on Tehran to answer key questions about evidence of Iranian studies on designing nuclear warheads, converting uranium, and testing high explosives as well as missile parts suitable for delivering a nuclear warhead.
While Iran claims that it has answered all questions, the IAEA report temperately but unambiguously shows otherwise. "At this stage," the agency observes, "Iran has not provided the agency with all the information, access to documents, and access to individuals necessary to support Iran's statements."
The IAEA is doing its job: to safeguard the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. If Iran is to be prevented from attaining a nuclear weapons capability, there will have to be a breakthrough in ongoing talks between the Islamic Republic and six major powers - the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany.
There continue to be worries and rumors of a military strike against Iran in the waning days of the Bush administration. But any such use of force would almost certainly have disastrous consequences and would delay Iran's attainment of a nuclear weapons capability at most for a few years.
Diplomacy - real give-and-take bargaining - offers the best hope for keeping nuclear weapons out of Iran. The European Union's foreign affairs chief, Javier Solana, is about to present a package of commercial and political incentives that Iran would receive if it suspends its enrichment of uranium. At the same time, Tehran has offered its own package deal, one that includes a proposal for comprehensive security cooperation and the possibility of an international consortium selling "low-enriched" uranium suitable for power plants but not weapons.
The catch would be that at least one such source of this uranium would have to be on Iranian soil. Technically, it would be possible to put such a facility in a so-called black box that makes it impossible for Iran to divert the uranium produced there for a military program. This is the kind of compromise President Bush - or more likely his successor - ought to pursue as a priority of America's national security.
