Iran has been issuing seemingly contradictory statements about its nuclear programme. But they include hints that the current international campaign to bring Tehran back to the negotiating table may be taking effect — that a diplomatic solution, guaranteeing Iran’s access to nuclear energy for peaceful uses but barring its development of nuclear weapons, is still achievable. Last week, Iran’s preening President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared that Iran is now enriching nuclear fuel on an industrial scale.

Ahmadinejad warned foreign powers to stop trying to put pressure on Iran to suspend its enrichment of uranium and to accept that Iran’s nuclear programme is “irreversible.”

Striking a markedly different pose, the head of Iran’s Supreme Security Council and lead nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, declared: “Today, with the nuclear fuel cycle complete, we are ready to begin real negotiations with the aim of reaching an understanding.”

Iran is now facing a stark choice between isolation and cooperation because factions of the Bush administration that favour consensus-building and patient diplomacy have had their way on the Iran dossier. The hard-liners who believe in standing on the sidelines and shouting about an axis of evil have proved that their kind of statecraft goes nowhere.