UPDATE ON IRAN - AT 9:15 A.M. ET:  What a difference excellent reporting makes.  David E. Sanger, superlative reporter for The New York Times, gives us an update on this morning's story - see our first posting - on Iran's "agreement" over its nuclear program.  Sanger's copy reflects some of the concerns we raised when we saw the first reports, and extends them.  This is important stuff:

VIENNA — The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said Wednesday that Iranian negotiators had agreed to a draft of an agreement to ship much of its stockpile of nuclear fuel to Russia, but cautioned that it would have to be approved by Friday in both Tehran and Washington.

The key to the agreement, if it works, would lie in the timing of the shipments — a detail officials were not discussing in Vienna in the hours after the announcement. If Iran actually sends the full 2,600 pounds of low-enriched uranium at issue to Russia in a single shipment, it would have too little fuel on hand to build a nuclear weapon for roughly a year, according to the agency’s experts. But if the fuel leaves Iran in batches, the experts warn, Iran would have the ability to replace it almost as quickly as it leaves the country.

That's the first asterisk.  There are more.  When dealing with Iran, there are many, many asterisks.

The 2,600 pounds amounts to about 75 percent of Iran’s known stockpile of fuel. That estimate, as one senior European diplomat put it on the sidelines of the three days of negotiations here, “assumes that Iran has accurately declared how much fuel it possesses, and does not have a secret supply.”

Something we noted earlier.  How will the White House react to this?  We hope it will react with heavy skepticism.

Ultimately, Mr. Obama would have to get Iran to agree to give up the enrichment process as well, or the fuel taken out of circulation in the draft agreement would soon be replaced. During the campaign, Mr. Obama and his aides said that Iran could not be trusted to enrich uranium. But he has not made the cessation of enrichment a prerequisite to talks, and it is still under way, in violation of three United Nations Security Council resolutions.

Another asterisk just dropped.

Iran’s representative to the I.A.E.A., Ali Asghar Soltanieh, told reporters on Wednesday that while his team of negotiators had accepted the draft agreement, senior officials in Tehran would have to approve it. “We have to thoroughly study this text,” he said.

You do that, fella. 

Don't you love it?  We've accepted the draft, but we have to study it.  I guess they're for it before being against it. 

Or, as Golda Meir used to say, "If my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a carriage."

October 21, 2009