The Independent and others today highlight a report from US "Intelligence Agencies" that says that Iran ended any nuclear weapons program it had going four years ago in response to threats of sanctions and force and international signs of disapproval

Iran 'has halted its nuclear weapons programme'

By Leonard Doyle in Washington
Published: 04 December 2007
In a blow to Bush administration hawks demanding military strikes on Iran, a US intelligence report reveals that Tehran's secret nuclear weapons programme was shut down four years ago. The finding which has come as a surprise to friends and foes of the US concluded: "We do not know whether [Iran] currently intends to develop nuclear weapons." That is in sharp contrast to an intelligence report two years ago that stated Iran was "determined to develop nuclear weapons".

Now, I've never really got as worked up about Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the powers that be in the west seem to want me to be. Armed with just a little knowledge of how Islam views the gifts of God - nature - and everyone's right to share in that bounty I see no contradiction in their claim that Iran has a right to the same advantages of nuclear power as anyone else on the planet and should be allowed to develop its own fuel security - perhaps especially so for an economy so tied to dwindling hydro-carbon fuel sources.

Scary mad? or Funny mad?

But I also have a bit more regard for the Ayatollahs' level of self control and state control than most I suspect. Ahmadinejad is not a Saddam Hussein. The autocrat in Iran is not the populist big-mouthed macho President, but the scion of the pious, quiet, considering religious cadre, the "Supreme Leader". And, despite the circumstances of their rise to power, I've always believed them to be that much more circumspect about dealings with the rest of the world, and a bit more interested in maintaining a place at the table rather than posturing as pariah state. And most importantly, it is they and not the secular presidency that holds sway over foreign policy.

So I hope this "news" will help some world leaders find a way of stepping back from the brink a little, though there is, it appears, enough comfort in the report that keeping a lid on the situation is a credit to Bush's hawkish policies towards Iran for the past few years for him perhaps even to ignore this report completely. But for me now the way forward with Iran must be one of constructive engagement rather than brinksmanship. Ultimately the way we may be able to change what is still to me an odious regime is going to be through showing ordinary Iranians by whatever means we can that liberal democracy is a better way and we can only do that if we both open up a bit.

A few years ago Iran was heading down a different path - with the opening up of their banking system to the outside world they were making strides towards the economic freedom that could eventually set the people free as well. We don't help those factions inside Iran get back to power by making the current conservative regime seem to be the stalwart defenders of their state and their faith against an always hostile world.

Of course the greatest irony in all this for me is that secretly, I'll bet the very people who got Bush into power in the first place, the evangelical Christian Right in the US, would dearly love to be able to modle their own state on the theocratic fascism of Iran. The thought of the Southern Baptist Convention choosing who may stand for Congress and who can be President and having control over that country's holy firepower is truly frightening.