by CKR
The sources that said that Larijani canceled his speech turned out to be wrong. Like Ahmadinejad, he didn’t say any more about the nuclear program, so there may not be any progress there.
He did say, however, that Iran is ready to solve its nuclear issues with the International Atomic Energy Agency in three weeks. That’s what India’s Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee was urging in his visit to Iran last week.
Larijani repeated President Ahmadinejad’s statement that Iran is not seeking nuclear weapons and that its program is not a threat to Israel (Canada, Pakistan news sources).
Javier Solana made no progress in talks with Larijani on the EU3 negotiations after more positive expectations.
If you've been clicking, you may be wondering why none of the links above are to US news sources. Here’s what I found, via Google News, from the US: CBS, Forbes, International Herald Tribune, San Diego Union-Tribune. The first three are basically all the same AP story. And here's a more complex article from Britain’s Guardian.
It’s hard to know what’s really going on. The news coverage is so polarized that reading between the lines is an exercise in imagination. I'd like to find a copy of Larijani's speech. Here’s one analysis, from Australia, that suggests that Iran has decided that silence about its nuclear program serves it better than loud celebrations. The Iranians are as good at spin as anyone. And they seem to have figured out, along with Vladimir Putin, that it’s easy to look peaceloving when America is beating the war drums.