Iran Strategy: Cold War Echo

WASHINGTON, April 29 — Iran and the United States have begun to reveal new strategies in their nuclear dispute that seem bound to escalate their confrontation, as both nations seek to turn to their advantage a highly critical report that portrays a nuclear program proceeding at full tilt, in growing secrecy.

In many ways, what has unfolded in the past three days resembles cold-war deception and brinkmanship, with some decidedly new twists for a very different nuclear age. As in the early days of the cold war, both sides have tried to write the rules on the fly, using every tool available — from American threats of sanctions to Iranian threats to cut off oil.

Iran, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, has been successful in gradually blinding the agency's inspectors, increasingly denying them access to crucial sites and steadfastly refusing to answer questions about suspected links between Iran's civilian nuclear program and its military.

While Iran denies any clandestine effort to build a nuclear weapon, it is clearly drawing on the diplomatic playbook of a country that has done just that — North Korea. Iran has gone so far as to boast about, and perhaps exaggerate, its nuclear prowess to try to convince the West that its program is now unstoppable.

Gholamreza Aghazadeh, the chairman of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, and other Iranian officials on Friday described their nuclear program as "irreversible." They argue that the United States should simply accept this — much as it now accepts that Pakistan and India will never give up nuclear technology.