A deal struck by European powers to suspend Iran's nuclear enrichment activities - blessed yesterday by the International Atomic Energy Agency - puts a few more teeth in international efforts to inhibit Iran from ever developing a nuclear bomb.

In that sense, the deal is a victory for attempts to stop the spread of nuclear weapons and for global security. But deal supporters and skeptics alike will be watching carefully over coming weeks to see if the accord reached between Iran and Britain, France, and Germany takes hold - or unravels in the same way as earlier efforts to curtail Iran's ambitions diplomatically.

"Because of the specificity of this [agreement], if it holds, it should provide us with more security, so that's a good thing," says Paul Kerr, a nonproliferation analyst at the Arms Control Association in Washington. "But trends were not positive before. And even now there's enough ambiguity that ... we'll have to live with a certain amount of uncertainty for the foreseeable future."

The key question now, some analysts say, is how the United States responds to the deal - and whether it acts to support it or kill it.

"This deal freezes Iran's programs and gives us space to negotiate a permanent end to the programs," says Joseph Cirincione, head of the nuclear nonproliferation project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. "The US and only the US can provide the security guarantees Iran needs to permanently end its nuclear programs."

The US, he adds, "can kill the deal by sitting by passively. This will not work without US participation."

In language that was considerably weaker and more conciliatory than what the US had sought, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) welcomed what it called Iran's "voluntary, nonlegally binding, confidence-building" agreement to suspend uranium enrichment activities. The international proliferation watchdog is charged with verifying that the accord is not broken.

The IAEA said yesterday it had ascertained that Iran's enrichment work, including 20 disputed centrifuges (or enrichment processors) that the Iranians had sought to leave outside the accord, had been suspended.

Under terms of the deal, Iran will allow the IAEA to put the country's enrichment and reprocessing activities under surveillance. But instead of being sealed, the machinery will be placed under camera surveillance. In addition, Iran has agreed to cease all "testing" involving the enrichment facilities - a change from earlier demands that it cease "research and development" activities.

The Iranian government insists its nuclear program is for peaceful, energy-generating purposes only. The US doubts that's true, and the Europeans have been worried enough to press through diplomatic channels for agreements.

US officials note that a year-old accord reached between the IAEA and Iran has not stopped nuclear development by a country officially listed by Washington as a state sponsor of terrorism. The US believes the international community may be capable of curtailing activity at Iran's known nuclear facilities, but it suspects there is more to Iran's program than meets the international eye.

Recently the CIA said in a fresh assessment that IAEA monitoring and inspections can prevent Iran from proceeding with enrichment work at known facilities - but the question mark was what facilities Iran may have that the world doesn't know about.

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