Iran is still spinning the shots

ANALYSIS: Bronwen Maddox - The Times

OUT of all the dust and drama of the past fortnight's struggle with Iran, I'd say the score is one point for diplomacy and two points for Iran, which has bought yet more time to advance its half-secret nuclear work.

Sure, there's yet another test of its intentions looming, on October 18, and another one six days later. But Iran has again proved world-class at spinning the West's red lines and deadlines into more months in which to move its work forward. "Knowing they're liars and cheats doesn't mean you can't do a deal," said Mark Fitzpatrick, an Iran nuclear specialist at the International Institute for Strategic Studies think tank in London. "It makes it all the more necessary to do a deal."

I'd put Fitzpatrick, a consistent advocate for diplomacy, on the optimistic side of the argument. It has to be said expectations range only from low to zero. The bleaker case - and, I think, the stronger one - is that Iran has again made a probably worthless concession to win time.

"This is an ongoing contest and we're in round, oh, about 147 in an open-ended bout," said Anthony Cordesman of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "We honestly need to understand that these technologies are being disseminated to the point a country wanting to have a breakout capability (can do so) or can create a structure so confusing we can't tell if it's complying or not."

Of the four new jolts to the drama, the first was the revelation Iran had a secret plant at Qom for enriching uranium. The second, that Russia might back new sanctions; third, a "deal" in Geneva on Thursday - when Iran said it would send uranium to Russia to be enriched, and accept more scrutiny from the IAEA, the UN watchdog; and fourth, the publication of a private annex to an IAEA report, with signs of Iran's weapons research. Fitzpatrick - while scathing about the efforts of Mohammed ElBaradei, the International Atomic Energy Agency director-general, to "avoid pointing the finger at Iran" - argues the moves "take us forwards" because they "deal with the two most serious risks". That is the secret work and Iran piling up so much enriched uranium it chose to break out from arms control treaties in a dash for the bomb.

Will Iran comply with the Geneva deal, supposedly a triumph for US President Barack Obama? Fitzpatrick, while expressing "no great faith", said it is a "step towards (Iran) accepting limits". Cordesman is more caustic: "It's not clear there was a Geneva deal. Is Iran going to ever comply with the spirit of that? No one else does."

The problem, one Western official explained, is that Iran said nothing about how much enriched uranium it would send to Russia, or when.

On October 18, Iran must tell the agency whether it will let inspectors into the Tehran reactor and on the 24th and 25th to Qom. Those who argue that there's progress say that if, at the end of the year, Iran "is just messing us about", then there'll be an even better case for sanctions.

If you look at the score from this round, the West has a promise without numbers. Tehran has a few solid more months to spin its uranium centrifuges.