Finger-Wagging Won't Stop Iran's Nukes

This weekend Russian specialists will begin loading low-enriched uranium fuel rods into Iran's Bushehr reactor, the initial step in getting its first nuclear power plant up and running. Though Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, has criticised the irreversible startup as "premature", Bushehr is in fact a long-delayed fiasco predating the Iranian revolution. By contract, the spent fuel rods, containing weapons-grade plutonium, are to be returned to Russia. Uneasy faith that Iran will keep its promise, if only because it still lacks the technology to process the rods at home, is the sole reason that America and its allies are not hysterical. Whether nominally safe or not, Bushehr foreshadows Iran's more ominous nuclear plans, which the Obama administration's hectoring and cajoling have signally failed to discourage.