Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is running rings around the West

Con Coughlin

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's president, will have good reason for feeling very pleased with himself this weekend. Rather than facing the wrath of a United Nations security council that claims it is determined to call a halt to Iran's illicit nuclear programme, he has achieved what seemed impossible a week ago – he has bought Iran even more time, without making any serious nuclear concessions. During the six years that Iran has been negotiating with the West over its controversial nuclear programme, it has taken the politics of procrastination to an entirely new level. Keep the talks going, and keep those centrifuges spinning - that has been the dictum that has defined Iran's approach to the nuclear crisis and, from Iran's perspective, it continues to pay dividends.

The Iranians will contend that, having agreed to hand over three-quarters of their stockpiles of enriched uranium for further processing to Russia and France, it has made a significant gesture to the West.

Tehran has also agreed to let UN inspectors visit the top secret enrichment facility at Qom, whose existence was unknown to the outside world until last month, even though it has been under construction for nearly a decade.

These offers certainly appear to have satisfied the demand of the six global powers hosting the talks in Geneva last week that Iran is serious about negotiating an end to the nuclear crisis. The Obama administration is already waxing lyrical about the first face-to-face meeting between Iranian and American officials since the 1979 Iranian revolution.

The one hour session between William Burns, the U.S. State Department's political director, and Sayeed Jalili, Iran's chief negotiator, was said to have amounted to "a significant conversation", which the Americans believe will lead to the Iranians entering into intensive negotiations to end the nuclear stand-off.

But before we get too carried away with all the Obama administration's hype about the successful outcome of the Geneva talks, it is important to remember that, so far as the nuclear negotiations are concerned, we have been here before.

From the outset of the West's attempts to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran, the Iranians have promised much and delivered little. They have repeatedly promised to freeze their controversial uranium enrichment activities at Natanz, only to resume enrichment once they realised there was nothing the West could do to stop them.

Mr Burns and the other American officials who travelled to Geneva will also be well aware that Mr Ahmadinejad personally appointed Mr Jalili to represent him at the talks, because he has a proven track record in Tehran as a hardline defender of the Islamic regime.

Having been the chief adviser to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country's supreme leader, Mr Jalili is credited with having masterminded the ruthless suppression of last summer's pro-reform protests that swept the country after Mr Ahmadinejad's highly contentious June election victory.

Mr Jalili was appointed Iran's chief nuclear negotiator after Mr Ahmadinejad became concerned that his predecessor, Gholam Reza Aghazadeh, was getting too close to UN inspectors working for the Intenational Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. Mr Aghazadeh is a close ally of Mir-Hossein Mousavi, the defeated presidential candidate, and Mr Aghazadeh was sacked after he accused Mr Ahmadinejad of corruption.

Mr Jalili, by comparison, is a die-hard supporter of Mr Ahmadinejad's repressive regime, and the Iranian president knows he can trust him to ensure that Iran's nuclear development remains on track.

The key for Iran is Natanz. The longer the thousands of centrifuges based in the vast, bomb-proof underground facility continue to enrich uranium, the closer the Iranians come to the all important holy grail of having a self-sufficient nuclear capability. And once that has been achieved – which many experts believe could be as early as next year - the negotiations over the future of its nuclear programme will be rendered meaningless.

The other reason to be sceptical about the Obama administration's apparent optimism over the Geneva talks is Washington's belief that it can count on Russian support if the Iranians fail to deliver.

Having made the grand gesture of cancelling the US missile defence that was designed to protect Europe from an Iranian nuclear attack, President Barack Obama is desperately hoping that he can persuade Moscow to become an active partner in the international effort to curb Tehran's nuclear ambitions.

The Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, has certainly made encouraging noises to that effect, but whether he is in a position to deliver on them – assuming he actually wants to – is another matter. Under his predecessor, Vladimir Putin, who many believe still retains an iron grip over Russia's foreign policy, Moscow forged a strong strategic alliance with Tehran which continues to this day. The Russians plan to provide Tehran with sophisticated anti-aircraft missile systems that would help to protect Iran from any future military strike by the US or Israel.

The Russians are under no illusions about Iran's nuclear ambitions and, given their geographical proximity to Iran's border (it's a day's drive from Moscow to Iran's northwestern border) know that a nuclear-armed Iran would pose as much of a threat to Russia as it would the West.

But Moscow has the advantage of having detailed knowledge of Iran's nuclear progress, as Russian technicians have helped to build the Bushehr nuclear power plant. The Russians clearly believe the Iranians still have a long way to go before they can build an atom bomb, and in the meantime there is an opportunity for them to exploit the West's obsession with Iran to their advantage.

So far as Mr Putin is concerned, the Iran crisis presents Moscow with a golden opportunity to assert itself as a global player. "Iran is the only card the Russians have to play on the world stage, so they will hang on to it for as long as possible," commented a senior Western diplomat. "It is not in Russia's interests to have this problem resolved any time soon."

It is for that reason that, whatever Mr Medvedev might tell Mr Obama, the Russians are not going to be campaigning vociferously for new sanctions against Iran if, as many expect, the Geneva talks end in failure.

Con Coughlin is the author of Khomeini's Ghost (Macmillan)

Comment: Here in Israel, the USA is seen even as more incompetent.

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