Iran: inching forward

You'll probably have noticed that Iran has restarted researching with one of its gas centrifuges at Natanz, and has threatened to expel IAEA inspectors if the issue is referred to the UN Security Council. This has started a fair amount of diplomatic chatter between the big international players (see here, here and here for examples), though China and Russia still need to be brought on board before any sanctions can occur. Still, there's no reason to panic. It will still be a long time before Iran manages to enrich uranium well enough to produce a weapon, and taking all of the necessary steps into account, they are still well over a decade away from producing a bomb, at the soonest. That's ample time to spook the Security Council into a suitably unified stance, or even for President Ahmadinejad, given his somewhat instable position, to be replaced by a more pragmatic alternative - see the links at the top of the last post for more information on that count.