If Iran goes nuclear ...

Few observers expect the IAEA to send the Iran case to the Security Council at this point, with several European countries having just concluded an agreement with Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment programs while international assistance is negotiated.

On the heels of that agreement last week, Iran announced Monday it had frozen its uranium enrichment program. But the seeds of a breakdown appeared already sown in the deal, with Iran saying the freeze would be "brief" and tied to the Europeans' making good on promises of economic assistance, while the Europeans insisted on a "sustained" freeze before other elements of the deal would set in.

In any event, the Bush administration remains deeply skeptical of the prospects for the European plan to derail Iran's nuclear ambitions. One reason is that over recent years Iran's nuclear program has become tightly bound with national pride, thus making it all the more difficult for a regime - particularly one whose popularity is already on the wane - to give it up.

"It doesn't matter what faction it is, from the radical religious conservatives to the left, there's a consensus that Iran has a right to pursue the nuclear fuel cycle, and that indeed it has a right to develop nuclear weapons if it chooses," says Mr. Brumberg. "It's something that unites the country, so in a time of deepening divisions it's not something that anyone wants to renounce."

Ray Takeyh, an Iran expert at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, says the Iranians are not yet on a par with Pakistanis: "In Karachi you see clocks in the form of a nuclear warhead." But he says polls show as many as 80 percent of Iranians supporting the country's nuclear ambitions, underscoring how difficult securing an agreement from Iran may be.

Still, experts like Mr. Takeyh say it is the "exceptionalism" of the bomb landing in the hands of such an "unpredictable, unstable, and aggressive regime" that makes Iran "a nearly existential threat."

Some experts hold out the hope that Iran, if it became a nuclear power, could yet evolve in somewhat the same way India has- from a one-time international agitator to a nuclear power taking its position seriously and demonstrating stronger interests in regional stability.

That Iran has not caused all the trouble in next-door Iraq that it is assumed it could have is one factor cited in support of Iran's potential for evolving into a responsible actor. Maybe Iran would not use its nuclear status to try to drive up oil prices, or to husband a more radical Palestinian future, some observers suggest.

But even that would not address the risks posed by nuclear proliferation in perhaps the world's least stable region. As nonproliferation expert Sokolski says, the world is opening a can of worms if it allows countries the right, as Iran is claiming, to enrich uranium while claiming its ambitions are peaceful. The message to other nuclear wannabes would be clear.

The problem of everyone "becoming nuclear ready," Sokolski says, is that "maybe it's not quite the bomb, but it's within a screwdriver turn of it."

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