Unfortunately it will take more than restraining President George W. Bush's martial impulses to keep the region nuclear-free. The NIE will probably end up doing as little good for the reputation of U.S. intelligence agencies as their faulty assessments of Saddam Hussein's WMD capacities. But in the shorter run it may do some good by making clear that this is not just a quarrel between Iran and the United States.

American hawks were bitterly critical of the NIE conclusions, fearing that it would destroy any hope of further pressure on Iran through U.N. Security Council sanctions by giving Russia and China grounds to call them unnecessary. Both countries were reluctant supporters of earlier rounds of sanctions – very understandably, as they have major economic ties with Iran in the energy field. Russia has a $1 billion contract to build a nuclear power plant at Bushehr and has been shipping nuclear fuel there.

What is not widely understood is that there are three elements to a nuclear weapons program: nuclear fuel enrichment, a delivery system (e.g. missiles), and weaponization, or the creation of a warhead. The NIE judgment dealt only with the last third of the equation. In the meantime, Iran has been developing both its nuclear fuel enrichment program and its missile program.

It has recently designed, built, and started to install a new, more efficient, type of centrifuge, the IR-2, used for the enrichment of uranium for use in nuclear power stations, or at a higher level of enrichment, in nuclear weapons. About 1,200 of these could produce enough weapons-grade uranium for a bomb in one year. It also has a heavy water reactor for producing plutonium, an alternative to uranium in creating a nuclear device.

And recently it test-launched a long-range missile. That caused a major rethink in the Kremlin, previously a defender of Iran against U.S. criticism, about Iranian intentions. Iranian missiles can't reach the United States but they could reach Russian territory, a consideration that was enough for Russia to make its concerns public.

Now, Vitaly Churkin, Russia's envoy to the United Nations, has stated that Russia will support a new round of sanctions against Iran unless it stops the activities of its heavy water project in the next few days and cooperates unconditionally with the inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency, whose report last Friday listed several still unanswered questions.

Iran claims to only be developing a peaceful nuclear energy program. Yet if this is so, it is somehow performing a good imitation of a country in pursuit of nuclear weapons. That is not just a problem for the United States. It is a major policy concern for Russia, and for the Arab states of the region. Taking the U.S. military option off the table should provide a great incentive for developing a broad alliance of affected countries to restrain Iran from developing nuclear weapons and destabilizing the region.