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The pattern of international efforts to confront Iran’s nuclear program has become all too familiar. The West – first the EU-3, and later the US – leads “diplomatic processes” to nowhere; Russia and China go back and forth between Iran and the West, reluctant to take too harsh a stance against Iran’s ongoing defiance, and agreeing only to belated and weak UN Security Council resolutions on sanctions; and the International Atomic Energy Agency continues to pose questions to Iran about the military dimensions of its nuclear program that Iran avoids answering, while at the same time it continues to install and run additional uranium enrichment cascades.

The Iranians are successfully playing for time, and time is on their side. All sides are hesitant to firmly pronounce the Iranian nuclear program as weapons-oriented, and Iran senses that its target is almost in sight.

But in recent weeks there are indications of a change, as the international community begins to take a more realistic look at the Iranian nuclear program. The facts of Iran’s progress speak for themselves: It has mastered the uranium enrichment process and accumulated enough 3.5 percent enriched uranium toward the potential to produce military-grade uranium (90%) for at least two nuclear devices.