mheslep said:
Official according to who? He's a bureaucrat, even if highly placed. He's not Supreme Leader Khamenei, he's not President Ahmadinejad.
Yeah, this is a big issue when it comes to diplomacy/relations with Iran. The Islamic Republic is fairly schizophrenic, with some elements acting like a normal, rational nation-state, while others seem to still be wedded to a messianic idea of Iran as the vanguard of a global Islamic revolution. As far as anyone outside can tell, these different strains have yet to be reconciled, which leads to erratic, sudden shifts in Iran's approach to the world, and a lack of coherence between the rhetoric emerging from different factions. This poses a major problem for any outsider considering diplomacy with Iran, as it's hard to gauge exactly how much authority the delegate you're negotiating with has to make any deal stick. It also makes it extremely difficult for more pragmatic elements with Iran to engage in effective diplomacy with the outside world, as they risk being undermined by the hardline elements (either being portrayed as 'collaborators,' or simply discredited by having their deals undone after the fact).
One should bear in mind that America's diplomatic impasse with Iran predates the current Administration by decades; there are structural impediments to effective diplomacy that any President, no matter how committed, will be faced with. The big problem here is that while everyone is more-or-less happy to wait around for Iran to sort its identity out, as long as they don't pose a dire threat. But the risk of nuclear proliferation changes that calculus, which, considering the disfunctions of Iran as a polity, creates serious risks.
So, while there are presumbly factions in Iran bent on weaponization (and even nuclear attacks), and others that are opposed to weaponization, my best guess is that Iran will end up developing a robust fuel cycle that would position them to credibly be able to develop a bomb on a short time frame (the fuel cycle is, by far, the most difficult part of creating weapons. Building a rudimentary, but still devestating, weapon is easy work once you already have the fuel). This gives them much of the benefits of actually possessing a weapon (i.e., neighbors will be afraid of antagonizing them into weaponizing), while leaving the door open for a non-violent resolution to the current stand-off, where Iran would pledge not to build a weapon and abide by the NPT, etc. This is the same basic posture maintained by many countries such as Japan and Brazil. You might call it a "nuclear threshold state," if you like.
However, such a state of affairs is still unacceptable to the US, as well as every other country in the Middle East. While the threshold posture is probably sufficient to avoid actual military action, it is pretty much guaranteed to lead to further fuel-cycle proliferation in the region, which in turn could lead to an actual weapons race. Any of which, given the polities in question, greatly increases the odds of nuclear materials or even weapons ending up in the hands of terrorists. A nuclear Iran is simply not good for regional or global peace and stability. And it's troubling that people have gotten so used to complaining about Iraq that they don't seem to consider the possibility that attacking Iran to prevent such an outcome might be the lesser of two evils. MAD only barely worked at preventing nuclear war between two stable, rational powers, and even then it required quite a bit of luck and restraint. A Middle East where Iran, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Syria and Egypt all have nuclear arms is a recipe for Armageddon.