The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) a UN watchdog group now candidly concedes that Iran has rapidly increased its enriched uranium stockpile which can be developed into a nuclear device. Since August Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium jumped from 480kg to 630kg. While such research and development pose direct slaps to the Security Council’s authority, the reality remains that Iran has long been playing for time in its quest to harness the nuclear genie.

That’s why IAEA inspectors are barred from suspected sites and are not being allowed access to documentation related to Iran’s military programs. Reports emerging from a IAEA’s closed door meeting in Vienna furthermore suggest a near “communication vacuum” between nuclear agency officials and the Iranians. The UN agency admits that it cannot verify that Tehran’s nuclear program is not aimed at producing a bomb.

In the meantime the TASS news agency has announced that work on the Russian built civilian nuclear facility at Busher in Iran in nearly complete and the reactor should come on line in 2009.

A Financial Times article adds, “The IAEA report also says there has been a breakdown in communication between the agency and Iran over alleged research on atomic weapons.” Equally, “The Iranians are making good progress on enrichment but there is absolute stone-walling on past military activities,” adds Mark Fitzpatrick of the London’s International Institute of Strategic Studies.

Diplomacy by the West Europeans to keep the nuclear genie in the bottle has been only marginally effective; the usual style over substance rhetoric about “tough resolutions” and tightening economic sanctions which have done little to seriously deter the scientific research in sites inside the Islamic Republic most especially, the Natanz facility. Though European diplomacy remains an important tool in ratcheting down Iran’s nuclear research, developments clearly favor the incoming American Administration to stop the very real and present danger of further proliferation.

Barack Obama is famously on record of wanting to have negotiations with Iran’s leadership as to defuse the threat. While the West Europeans are probably secretly happy to shift the burden of responsibility to the U.S., the inherent danger remains that the new Administration would be pulled into a political vortex where the Iranians, expert and most accomplished bargainers, will present a host of extraneous issues from the 1970’s for Washington to first surmount.

Moreover, in the wake of the 1979 takeover and subsequent hostage crisis at the American Embassy by armed Iranian militants, there’s still no official diplomatic relations between Washington and Teheran.

Precisely because of a complex history on both sides, the U.S. side may likely then opt for a quick diplomatic deal with Iran, much of the sort the Geneva Agreements the Clinton Administration achieved with North Korea back in 1994. That flawed accord offered North Korea energy supplies and a civilian nuclear power reactor in exchange for limited inspections and transparency. Needless to say North Korea still covertly pursued its nuclear weapons program and tested an atomic bomb a few years ago.

Given that the Iranian leadership has recklessly threatened to use atomic weapons to destroy Israel, there’s painfully little room for negotiation, or time to stop them.

As this column has long stated, the Iranians are playing for time. The longer a divided or dithering West allows the situation to drift, the better the chances that Tehran’s scientists will reach their goals of capturing the nuclear genie and delivering the bomb to the Atomic Ayatollahs