Europe is aligning itself more with the United States in its position toward Iran's nuclear ambitions; failure of the Franco-Anglo-German led negotiations would look bad for both European credibility and diplomatic prowess. But Iran's new president leaves many questions open. Will he be able to intervene and put something else on the negotiating table, or, like the US, will he refuse to budge?

The new Iranian President doesn't wear a turban, and this symbol differentiates him from past presidents who were members of the ruling clerical elite. Despite having conservative religious, moral, and social positions, several interesting points appear in his political agenda, some of which may even sound like lefty populism. He has said for example that he wanted to be a president for the poor, and that he would use his position to lobby for the banning of nuclear weapons.

Munich's Sueddeutsche Zeitung went so far as to call him "the People's President." "With Mahmud Ahmadinejad's arrival, a generation is making it to office, which until now had little to say." When wondering about what type of President he will be, the paper suggests a look at his track record: "The government willingly paid the high bloody costs of the eight-year war with Iraq, and were compensated with nothing but basic daily privileges." While Iran's clerics, politicians, and opinion-makers drove around in fancy cars and lived in villas, this generation ate frugally and had modest accommodation. This is important, the editorialist says, because "they are the majority, and they could weigh more in the theocracy's future than the intellectual dissidents who have no base."

But what influence will Ahmadinejad have on his country's nuclear policy, and where does he stand exactly on the contentious issue? Yesterday, Teheran agreed to wait until the weekend to restart uranium refinement. But one thing has become clear, as writes the conservative Die Welt: "Europeans have agreed on a common position, not only between themselves, but also with the Americans. They are ready to take a tougher diplomatic stance with Iran." But whether this will produce the desired effect - Teheran's abandoning their nuclear ambitions in favour of a package of economic incentives - is not so clear. And putting the issue before the UN Security Council may not be much of a threat. "It is doubtful that Iran would be censured in New York," the paper writes. "The Chinese and the Russians are not interested in a confrontation with their oil supplier and business partner."

Nuclear weapons have been around ever since the US dropped the first A-bombs on Japan 60 years ago, writes the business daily Handelsblatt. But the current ambitions of countries like Iran and North Korea to join the "nuclear club" clearly remind us that the genie let out of the bottle over a half century ago is still lingering. The commentator goes on to say that nuclear arms are political weapons, and hence asks whether the international division of haves and have-nots is possibly unfair. It points to the 1970 non-proliferation treaty as discriminatory, because it only allows countries already possessing nuclear weapons to retain them, and these countries "are exclusively members of the UN Security Council with veto power over any changes to this privilege." On top of this, the paper writes, while the 1996 nuclear test ban treaty forbids "hot" tests, it permits computer simulations that only the most advanced nuclear countries can run. And since Afghanistan, the US has changed its former position renouncing a nuclear "first strike" - the resilience of underground Taliban bunkers to conventional explosives convinced the administration that they should further develop, and one day perhaps use, first-strike "mini-nukes". Washington should be careful, the paper writes, in its cookie-cutter use of the terms "good" and "evil." Because countries "who have power and the bomb at their disposal, should also play the role of protector and role model."