The Guardian has learned that an announcement will be made in the next month to establish a US interests section in Tehran, a halfway house to setting up a full embassy. The move will see US diplomats stationed in the country.

It goes on:

Bush has taken a hard line with Iran throughout the last seven years but, in the dying days of his administration, it is believed he is keen to have a positive legacy that he can point to.

The return of US diplomats to Iran is dependent on agreement by Tehran. But president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad indicated earlier this week that he is not against the opening of a US mission, saying Iran will consider favourably any request aimed at boosting relations between the two countries.

He has his legacy to think about I guess.

In July 1999 the man on this cover of the Economist, Ahmad Batebi, was arrested by Iranian authorities. He was tortured and told he would be killed.

During his interrogation he was blindfolded and beaten with cables until he passed out. His captors rubbed salt into his wounds to wake him up, so they could torture him more. They held his head in a drain full of sewage until he inhaled it. He recalls yearning for a swift death to end the pain. He was played recordings of what he was told was his mother being tortured. His captors wanted him to betray his fellow students, to implicate them in various crimes and to say on television that the blood on that T-shirt was only red paint. He says he refused.

Last month he escaped via Iraq and is now in Washington DC. His blog is here. The Economist spoke to him last week:

Looking at the picture that sparked his ordeal, he says that another man in his place might be angry, but he is not. Mr Batebi is a photographer himself. He says he understands what journalism involves. Had we not published the picture, he says, another paper might have. Looking at the same picture, his lawyer, interpreter and friend Lily Mazahery says she is close to tears: in it, the young Mr Batebi’s pale arms are as yet unscarred by torture.

The protests Mr Batebi took part in nine years ago frightened Iran’s rulers. The students were angry about censorship, the persecution of intellectuals and the thugs who beat up any student overheard disparaging the regime. Mr Batebi thinks Iran could well turn solidly democratic some day. In neighbouring states, religious extremism is popular. In Iran, he says, the government is religiously extreme, but the people are not.

He is cagey about how exactly he escaped. But he says he used a cellphone camera to record virtually every step of his journey, and will soon go public with the pictures and his commentary. Meanwhile, he seems to be enjoying America. He praises the way “people have the opportunity to become who they want to be”. Shortly after he arrived, he posted a picture of himself in front of the Capitol on his Farsi-language blog, with the caption: “Your hands will never touch me again.”

I look forward to an account of his life and his escape.

Could or would Israel try to drag the United States into such a confrontation? The answer is no, unless this is what the Bush administration wants to happen. The indications are that while some White House advisors may still contemplate such an action, it would be far more difficult to convince the secretaries of defense and state that another Middle Eastern war would serve American interests.

As was brought up yesterday, if Israel were considering a strike, they could wait until the near end of the Bush lame duck administration, and the beginning of an Obama/McCain one, thus avoiding the issue Kemp raises above.

Danny Postel points to this interesting piece in the Economist. It does not make for pleasant reading. After Israel’s recent practice run for bombing Iran, the newspaper concludes that they may not be bluffing.

It may well be true that Mr Bush is disinclined to bomb Iran now that he is a lame duck, but the possible advent of a President Obama might just make Israel more inclined to do so itself. As the hawkish John Bolton, a former Bush administration official, said this week, Israel may think the best time to attack would be during America’s presidential transition—too late to be accused of influencing the election and before needing a new president’s green light.

Everyone knows that Cheney’s fondest pipe dream is driving a bulldozer into the New York Times while drinking crude oil out of Keith Olbermann’s skull.

A UK diplomat said the EU3, the foreign ministers of the UK, Germany and France - had not heard anything new.

The Iranian official, Javad Vaeedi, cast the talks in a positive light and said he hoped the talks would continue.

The UN’s nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, is meeting in Vienna on Thursday and could refer Iran to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions.

Diplomats from EU3 plus the US, Russia and China are meeting for dinner in London on Monday evening to try to agree a common stance ahead of the Vienna talks.

IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei told Newsweek magazine that after three years of intensive work, he is still not able to conclude that Iran’s nuclear programme is aimed purely at energy creation rather than the manufacture of nuclear weapons.

“If they have the nuclear material and they have a parallel weaponisation programme along the way, they are really not very far - a few months - from a weapon,” he said.

With the US military stretched, how can a military option be considered. Special forces/air strikes, combined with a trade embargo, seems like the only options. And when Bush says he is seeking a non-military solution, is it the same as when he said the same during the inspections in Iraq in early 2003?

Iran may stop allowing snap inspections of its nuclear facilities if it is referred to the UN Security Council, says the country’s top negotiator.

Ali Larijani said Tehran would also consider pulling out of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) if the “language of force” continues.

The UN nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, is discussing Tehran’s activities, which Iran insists are for peaceful purposes.

The US and the EU are calling for Iran to be referred to the Security Council.

And Russia and China have given some support to Iran:

Moscow and Beijing may block the plan, with Russia saying the current situation was “not irreversible”.

Even more nuclear proliferation. Iran’s continued insistence that it acquired its nuclear capabilities legally under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (npt) would, if unchallenged, encourage its neighbors (including Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Turkey, Algeria) to develop nuclear options of their own and overtly declare possession or import weapons from elsewhere. Such announcements and efforts would likely undermine nuclear nonproliferation restraints internationally and strain American relations with most of its friends in the Middle East.

Dramatically higher oil prices. A nuclear-ready Iran could be emboldened to manipulate oil prices upward, either by threatening the freedom of the seas (by mining oil transit points as it did in the 1980s or by seeking to close the Straits of Hormuz) or by using terrorist proxies to threaten the destruction of Saudi and other Gulf state oil facilities and pipelines.

Increased terrorism geared to diminish U.S. influence. With a nuclear weapons option acting as a deterrent to U.S. and allied action against it, Iran would likely lend greater support to terrorists operating against Israel, Iraq, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Europe, and the U.S.

He believes the two options currently proving popular, bribery or bombing, could be disastrous.

On bombing:

Targeting Iran’s nuclear facilities risks leaving other covert facilities and Iran’s cadre of nuclear technicians untouched. More important, any overt military attack would give Tehran a casus belli either to withdraw from the npt or to rally Islamic Jihadists to wage war against the U.S. and its allies more directly. Whatever might be gained by technically delaying the completion of Iran’s bomb option, then, would have to be weighed against what might be lost in Washington’s long-term effort to encourage more moderate Islamic rule in Iran and the Middle East, to synchronize allied policies against nuclear proliferation, and to deflate Iran’s rhetorical demonstrations against U.S. and allied hostility. Moreover, bluffing an attack against Iran — sometimes urged as a way around these difficulties — would only aggravate matters: The bluff would inevitably be exposed and further embolden Iran and weaken U.S. and allied credibility.

On bribing:

As for negotiating directly with Tehran to limit its declared nuclear program — an approach preferred by most of America’s European allies — this too seems self-defeating. First, any deal the Iranian regime would agree to would validate the claim that the npt legally allows its members to acquire all the capabilities Iran possesses. In other words, working supposedly within the terms of the npt, any state can get as far along as Tehran is now. Second, it would foster the view internationally that the only risk in violating required npt inspections would be getting caught at it — and that the consequence of getting caught would amount to being bribed to limit only those activities the inspectors managed to discover.

He then goes on to suggest a broad range of diplomatic alternatives - all of which are worth reading.

Prime Minister Tony Blair said Thursday that Iran should be referred to the U.N. Security Council if it breaches its nuclear obligations, while Tehran vowed to resume some activities that can be part of the process of making nuclear weapons.

I can’t figure out why the frontpage story from the IHT was shifted.