In the club

摘要

"Iam officially announcing that Iran has joined...those countries which have nuclear technology," said Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's president, on April 11th. "This is the result of the Iranian nation's resistance." By enriching a quantity of uranium at its pilot plant at Natanz, in defiance of pleas from the United Nations Security Council, Iran this week strengthened suspicions that it is trying to build a nuclear weapon and shifted its confrontation with America into a higher gear. Even if it has achieved only 3.5% enrichment as it claims-far short of the level required to power a bomb-it marks a significant technical breakthrough. It was a step, said both the Americans and the Russians, in the wrong direction.