The new outbreak of protests and repression in Iran have got me looking back at what I wrote in June, at the time of the presidential election. My first column was called “Democracy can still win in Iran“. The second was “Check-List for an Iranian revolution“. I think both are still valid. In the second column, I argued three things essentially. First that Iran met many of the pre-conditions for a successful revolution. Second, that the government had crossed a line – and possibly doomed itself -  by killing demonstrators in the streets. And finally that the precedent of the Iranian revolution of 1979 suggested that events would take some time to play out because “it took more than a year of sustained unrest to topple the Shah.”

It’s that last point that would be worrying me, if I were part of the Iranian establishment. The pattern of 1978-79 in Iran was that unrest would die down for a while and then flare up again, gradually gathering unstoppable momentum, as the months passed. As the FT reports this morning, there are plenty of religious and national holidays coming up- not to mention funerals of demonstrators – that will give the opposition the scope to get people out on the streets again.

So how should the Iranian regime handle things? That is a pragmatic question, not a moral one. Morally obviously, President Ahmadi-Nejad and his backers should hold fresh and free presidential elections and accept the results. Assuming they are not going to do that and are, instead, intent on hanging onto power – what might work? I suspect they will try a new and even more ruthless crackdown. That is what regimes of this sort tend to do. It might work for a few months. But my guess is that, if the Iranian government resorts to new force and repression, it will fall by the end of 2010.

The next question, of course, is what kind of government might replace the current clerical regime?

By James Blitz, defence and diplomatic editor

Iran has this week made two announcements about its nuclear programme that made big headlines. The first is that it wants to build 10 new enrichment plants like the one that operates at Natanz. The second is that it wants to begin manufacturing low enriched uranium to 20 per cent purity that can be used in cancer treatments.  The first of these claims is being dismissed by western diplomats as a fanciful goal that Iran could never seriously achieve. The second claim, however, is causing a lot of concern in western capitals. It raises fears that Iran is about to take a big step towards the manufacture of the weapons grade uranium needed for a nuclear bomb.

The reason for western concern is this: Iran currently takes uranium hexafluoride gas, enriched to 0.7 per cent purity, and converts it to around 4 per cent, the level needed for nuclear reactor fuel.  If Iran jumps from 4 per cent to an enrichment level of 20 per cent, it  would still, on the face of it, appear to be well below the level needed to manufacture weapons grade uranium, which is of 90 per cent purity. However, Mark Fitzpatrick, a nuclear weapons expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, says that the move to 20 per cent is, in fact,  “a very worrying one.”

Mr Fitzpatrick explains: “A jump to 20 per cent actually puts you on the verge of getting weapons grade uranium,” he says.  “This is because the higher up the uranium enrichment level you go, the less technical effort is needed to make the additional incremental steps to get to 90 per cent.” A western diplomat who follows the Iran nuclear file agrees. “The jump from 0.7 per cent to 4 per cent,” he says, “is much more difficult in technical terms than the jump from 4 per cent to 20 per cent, which itself is  more difficult than the jump from 20 per cent to 90 per cent.”

According to this western diplomat, Iran is capable of manufacturing low enriched uranium at 20 per cent purity “within a matter of months.”  All they need to do, he says, is reconfigure their centrifuges at Natanz. The idea however that Iran can use 20 per cent enriched uranium to create cancer cures, as it claims, is dismissed by Mr Fitzpatrick. Iran cannot, by itself, convert 20 per cent enriched uranium into fuel with the correct specifications for the reactor it has. “If they tried to make their own fuel it would not be safe to put it in that reactor,” he says.

Mr Fitzpatrick is in no doubt about the significance of the announcement. He judges it to be “one of the most serious and worrying statements Iran has made in recent times.” Coming in the immediate aftermath of  Iran’s wild claims about building 10 new enrichment plants, its true importance may have been obscured.

Related reading:

Latest news on Iran FT

Iran is just asking for sanctions FP Passport

What to read on nuclear proliferation Foreign Affairs

By James Blitz, defence and diplomatic editor

Something remarkable has happened in the international negotiations with Iran over its nuclear programme. It is this.

For the past five years, Iran has often looked like a sharp and canny player of the diplomatic game, regularly dividing the US and Russia with its tactics, cleverly making concessions to negotiators in order to buy time, frequently rattling its opponents. Iranian diplomats have often seemed to me to be the sort of people you wouldn’t want to play chess with. They are master tacticians, who know full well how to confuse their adversaries.