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Iran's controversial president

Iran's president, who previously denied that the Holocaust took place and threatened Israel with extinction, has now managed to do what George Bush and Condi Rice haven't been able to do:  unite the United States and Europe, including Russia, on a joint diplomatic track - and get the U.S. to praise the United Nations.  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - the man with the unpronounceable name who fronts for the mullahs who run Iran - have defied the world by resuming nuclear research that could be used to develop a bomb.

I was at a State Department briefing today and asked the Secretary of State why Iran has chosen isolation. She, like most analysts, hasn’t figured out Iran's motive.  But most experts agree that Iran appears to have a deeply seated need to show it can be a nuclear power. 

Iran protests that it just wants to enrich uranium in order to produce nuclear energy. It can't explain why one of the world's great oil producing nations needs nuclear power plants and why it is refusing Russia's offer to do Iran's enriching on Russian soil, under international safeguards. 

As world oil prices spike today on the likelihood of a confrontation that could lead to economic sanctions and even an oil embargo on Iran, skeptics wonder whether there are any teeth in the likely international response.  The next step is an emergency meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency, a UN organization headed by Nobel laureate Mohammed el Baradei.  A sharp critic of the U.S. on Iraq, el Baradei now becomes a central player in validating America's diplomatic approach to Iran. 

Then the stalemate will go to the UN Security Council, where the U.S. needs to avoid a veto by China - deeply dependent on Iranian oil exports. China's response will largely depend on how Russia, a longtime ally of Iran, decides to vote. 

The greatest irony is that U.S. effort at the UN will be led by Ambassador John Bolton - a hawk who once told NBC News the Bush administration would "never let the mullahs get the bomb." (In fact, most intelligence projects that Iran is still at least five years away from solving all the technical issues it needs to answer before it could produce a weapon.)  Bolton and other administration hardliners used to talk about military options.  But Rice and intelligence officials have made it clear that there are no military options - not by the U.S., or Israel.  So the administration is now relying on the United Nations - the very organization it used to disdain. 

During Rice's briefing, our foreign news producer at Nightly News in New York Blackberried that the program wanted me to start preparing a story for tonight on Iran's unpredictable leader, the likely consequences in the oil markets, and the diplomatic options.  We're interviewing nuclear experts, oil analysts and others as we dig deeper into the larger consequences of Iran's decision to choose confrontation over diplomacy and will have that story for you tonight, on Nightly News.

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