President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad vowed that Iran would never surrender to Western demands to suspend its nuclear program and promised announcements on Tehran's atomic progress over the next two months in a speech marking the 28th anniversary of the Islamic revolution on February 11. On February 20, he called on Western nations to stop their own enrichment programs if they wanted his country to stop its own and return to negotiations.

Even after ElBaradei's report came out, the Iranian president made bold remarks. He said Iran's nuclear program couldn't stop, an assertion that Tian believes is evidence of Tehran's firm determination to carry on its nuclear program.

"We have the nuclear fuel cycle technology. Iran's onward march on this path is just like a train on a one-way track with no room for stopping, reverse gear or braking," the president was quoted by Xinhua News Agency as saying. "We have abandoned the reverse gear and the brakes of the train."

At the same time, Tian noted that Iran's Revolutionary Guards began a large-scale military drill on February 19, the third since the beginning of this year, to flaunt the country's power before the United States.

Meng Xiangqing, a professor at China's National Defense University, pointed out that this military drill was different from the previous ones, as it focused on the drilling of ground forces. According to him, some 60,000 troops were involved in the three-day exercises, which indicated that Iran was preparing for the worst.

Meng observed that Iran conducted only three military drills last year; this year, however, it has staged three in less than a month. He said the three drills as a whole, the first two of which centered on the training of the navy and air force, demonstrated Iran's strategy of defending against a U.S. invasion.

Apart from showing its military power to the United States, Meng believes the exercises had domestic implications as well. He noted that Iran has recently encountered difficulties in its economic development and is suffering from inflation. In fact, Ahmadinejad is faced with mounting pressure from religious leaders, the opposition and anti-war activists, he continued, so the military exercises served Ahmadinejad's political needs at home.

Going to war?

Tian of the CICIR offered a grave forecast for the future development of the Iranian nuclear issue. He told Beijing Review that Iran's persistence with its nuclear research and development in spite of the mounting international pressure has made a diplomatic solution more difficult. Against this backdrop, the United States is embracing an increasingly tough policy toward Iran, he added.

First of all, Washington has formalized a hard-line policy regarding the Iranian nuclear issue. In the new Iraq policy the Bush administration unveiled early this year, a stern approach aimed at containing Iran is explicitly proposed.