After weeks of wrangling, the US has finally obtained a presidential statement from the United Nations Security Council calling on Iran to honour its International Atomic Energy Agency obligations. In a typically defiant note, Iran?s foreign minister, Manouchehr Motaki, dismissed the message as ?an abuse of international mechanisms?. Far from resolving the Iranian nuclear threat, the debate in New York underscored the fragility of the international coalition and the strength of Iranian determination to proceed with its programme.

However, it is by no means inevitable that Iran will become the nuclear club?s next member. A more adroit American diplomacy could still dissuade Tehran from crossing the nuclear threshold. Conventional thinking in Washington holds that since the election of Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, Iran?s hardline president, last year, Tehran?s nuclear decisions are made by a narrow cadre of conservatives, determined to acquire the bomb. But in reality a subtle but real debate has broken out within the theocratic regime on how to proceed.