Iran, Still Defiant

Iran's hard-liners are back. Even with a reform-minded President formally in charge, the stern mullahs' persistent strength is visible everywhere. Last week the streets around the parliament building in Tehran's Baharestan district were festooned with posters hailing the Basij Islamic militia, radical volunteers who serve as one of the regime's most loyal protection forces. Upstairs in his sixth-floor office, Isfahan representative Hassan Kamran was wearing a white Basiji scarf around his neck in solidarity with the diehards, who are seen by many Iranians as free-ranging thugs. He was ranting against the U.S., warning that if President George W. Bush dares to attack Iran's nuclear facilities, Tehran will retaliate by striking Israel and U.S. ships in the Persian Gulf. "As Imam Khomeini taught us," he says, "we will respond to force with force."

This is the voice of militant Iran, where Islamic conservatives have made a thundering return to political office this year just as their country's nuclear ambitions have sparked growing alarm in the West. Yet despite Kamran's bluster, Iran's government has remained willing to negotiate in the standoff over its nuclear program. The U.S. has charged that what Iran claims to be a peaceful pursuit of nuclear energy is likely part of a rogue regime's covert effort to get its own nuclear weapons. After months of negotiating with European Union officials, Iran agreed to suspend the uranium-enrichment program that is at the heart of the accusations. Ten days later, however, Tehran put the deal in jeopardy by demanding an exemption for research involving a small number of centrifuges that are central to making bomb-grade fuel. By last weekend weary negotiators were still dickering over a compromise to salvage the hard-won agreement. The fits and starts gave ammunition to Bush Administration officials who are ready to send Iran's case to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions. If the deal is to be saved, someone will have to back down.

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The agreement Iran hammered out with diplomats from Britain, France and Germany could well be a critical step toward ending the Islamic regime's nuclear brinkmanship. Talks aimed at reaching a permanent understanding are scheduled to start in mid-December. The mullahs have agreed to freeze a variety of activities involving uranium enrichment and plutonium separation, which the West interprets as including the manufacture, import and testing of centrifuges. In return, Iran accepted various sweeteners, such as potential cooperation in economic, security and even nuclear matters that could one day reduce the country's isolation from the West.

It won't be easy for Iran to win the West's trust. When Tehran sought to change the terms of the agreement last week, it fueled doubts that Iran was negotiating in good faith. And according to European diplomats, the ruling clerics show no sign that they would agree to the West's bottom line: that Iran permanently abandon development of all nuclear technology that could give the nation the capability to construct an atomic weapon. The lead Iranian negotiator, national-security chief Hassan Rowhani, head of a commission on nuclear policy that reports directly to Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei, says, "Terminating our enrichment activities has been our red line and still is."

For the U.S. and a growing number of allies, it is unthinkable that an undemocratic Islamist regime that supports terrorism and opposes the Arab-Israeli peace process could get its hands anywhere near an atom bomb. Iranian reformers clearly understand that position. "If we have a democratic government, the world could trust it" on nuclear matters, says Reza Khatami, brother of President Mohammed Khatami and an outspoken reformer who was disqualified from seeking re-election to parliament this year. Iranian leaders were clearly concerned about U.S. pressure, says a European diplomat in Tehran, "or they wouldn't have bothered negotiating with us." Three days after Bush was re-elected, the Supreme Leader made a conciliatory gesture in his nationally televised Friday sermon. Directly addressing Bush, Khamenei said, "No, sir, we are not seeking to have nuclear weapons." Some Iranian officials insist that a compromise is within reach. Ali Akbar Salehi, a former representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) who still advises the government, told TIME in an interview last week that Iran's enrichment facilities could perhaps be privatized via an Iranian-European partnership to help eliminate skepticism about secret Iranian intentions. Mohammed Javad Larijani, a pragmatic conservative and leading Iranian mathematician, says, "Iran wants to clear the air of suspicion."