Persian Provocations

To make sense of what the regime in Teheran is doing these days is certainly not easy. An amount of both confusion and disagreement over policy seems almost certain to be there.

But the end result at the moment is a policy that is roughly as provocative against the international community as one can envisage. The resumption of certain nuclear activities only days before a planned meeting with the EU-3 that should explore the possibility of resuming negotiations can hardly be described in any other way.

The Iranian move also came in defiance of unusual separate messages delivered to the Tehran government over the weekend by Russia and China, as well as the United States, Britain and France. The messages warned Iran not to embark on further uranium activities.

Britain, France and the United States tried to have the five countries submit one joint declaration to Iran, but China, not wanting such a move to look like an attempt to gang up on Tehran, insisted that five separate messages be delivered.

But all the messages said much the same thing.

There is no knowing how this particular crisis will develop in the weeks and months ahead.

But unfortunately it is not too difficult to see scenarios which end up in very difficult and dangereous situation.

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