He may not be the most predictable, or for that matter even the most stable, of leaders, but Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad certainly has an enviable gift for dramatic timing. On Tuesday, two days before Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), was due in Tehran to check Iranian compliance with Security Council demands, Ahmadinejad announced that Iran has enriched enough uranium to be used to make nuclear fuel. Ahmadinejad has, in effect, answered ElBaradei's question while at the same time sending an additional signal: Iran is not messing around here. And the question of whether or not Tehran's intentions are peaceful or aggressive is now a moot one.

Ahmadinejad has said that the enriched uranium will be used exclusively to produce nuclear energy for civilian purposes, but the fact that Iran now has the potential to create a nuclear bomb will make the West nervous. On arriving in Tehran on Thursday, ElBaradei didn't waste much time in calling for Tehran to give up its uranium enrichment program. Clearly this is not going to happen. Wildly optimistic observers hope that this achievement will sate Ahmadinejad's bombastic nationalism and allow him to simmer down a bit without losing face. But those of a more pessimistic bent, including most of Germany's commentators on Thursday, fear that Ahmadinejad's announcement heralds the beginning of a new age of dangerous nuclear stalemates.

The center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung refers to Ahmadinejad's declaration as deliberately provocative, writing that "it is unfortunately impossible for inspectors to determine whether Iran is aiming for electricity or weapons. Whether the objective is weapons or fuel, the chemical and physical process for enriching uranium is the same." The paper suspects that Iran is a long way from having the amount of enriched uranium necessary to create any weapons. But it also believes that the most important question is being entirely ignored. "Where has Iran obtained the technical knowledge and equipment necessary to process uranium? It can be pretty much ruled out that the country could achieve this without the help of an experienced nuclear power. There are only a few engineers in the world who master the technology of the incredibly fast rotating gas centrifuges." According to the commentator, Iran's nuclear technology must have come from the illegal transfer of technology from other countries. A practice which, the paper concludes, must be stopped as quickly as possible.

The conservative daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung says that an Iran with enriched uranium is a nightmare come true. "The Islamic Republic now possesses the 'option' (to manufacture nuclear weapons), which makes it just a matter of time before that option is used as a political-military instrument." Although the paper admits that Iran might have been pushed into this position by reports of a possible United States military strike, it also suspects that Iran has aggressive foreign policy ambitions -- and not only against Israel. "At some point the UN Security Council members will have to decide whether they are willing to accept Iran as a nuclear power, or whether the risks that are connected to that are too great. That is a sobering thought and there are no 'cheaper' options," concludes the commentator.

The Financial Times Deutschland compares Iran's promotion to a nuclear power to the Soviet Union's leap into space with Sputnik in 1957. "It suddenly became clear that Moscow would in the future be able to hit its rival, the US, with intercontinental weapons. The strategic situation changed massively." Tehran's ability to enrich uranium is a similar shock for the world, believes the commentator, even if there are no immediate direct military consequences. "Nuclear diplomacy with the Mullah's regime so far has failed spectacularly… If a new diplomatic start is not successful, then sooner or later the world will find itself in a dramatic dilemma: Do we accept an Iranian nuclear weapon? Or should we try to prevent this from happening with a military preventative strike? The risk of war would then be a very real one." The paper calls for Europe to be more stringent with applying strict sanctions and for the US to open up official talks with Iran.