Iran is talking softly while playing for time to build its big nuclear stick.

Iranian leaders Monday said they were prepared to make some concessions to international pressure, led by Europe's major powers to slow down or halt some nuclear programs. But they want to enrich uranium.

Britain, France and Germany are expected this week to offer Iran a package of economic aid in return for a commitment to end nuclear enrichment programs at the newly built Bushehr atomic reactor complex, which would allow the Islamic Republic to rapidly make its own nuclear weapons. Al-Jazeera reported Monday that the Euro-package would include nuclear fuel for Iran's civilian atomic energy programs and a favorable new trade agreement with the 25-nation European Union.

In some respects, the European Big Three initiative is a triumph and validation for Iranian diplomacy. Since the U.S. conquest of Iraq, Tehran has prioritized developing and maintaining warm relations with the leading European states to prevent itself becoming diplomatically isolated and, therefore, at Washington's mercy.

However, the Euro-offer may not be enough. One of Iran's top strategists dealing with the West and the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Commission said Monday that Iran was prepared to play ball on some aspects of its nuclear program, but not that crucially important one.

From a tactical point of view, the discussion on how long to continue the suspension (of some atomic programs) is negotiable, Hassan Rowhani, secretary general of Iran's Supreme National Security Council announced on Iranian national television.

If the question is that of a suspension for a short period, we can talk about it. But if the question is of depriving Iran of its rights, that is not negotiable and the negotiating team does not have the right to discuss such a thing with the Europeans, he said in comments carried by aljazeera.com.

Iran therefore still seems headed on a collision course with the IAEA and with the Bush administration that could even lead to an outright war with the United States.

In September, the IAEA passed a resolution calling on Iran to halt its uranium enrichment program. The Vienna nuclear body is scheduled to meet to discuss the issue again on Nov. 25. If Iran continues to refuse to comply with its call, it would open the way for a drive led by the United States or the European Union to try and get a U.N. Security Council resolution to condemn Iran. Russia or China or both nations, however, would probably use their veto powers as two of the Security Council's five permanent members to veto U.N. authorization for any extreme action against Tehran.

Publicly, the Bush administration has emphasized its determination to exhaust diplomatic, nonviolent roads to get Iran to abandon its nuclear program. But it has taken no real steps to head off, let alone condemn, Israeli military preparations for an air strike at the Bushehr reactor.

The Israel Air Force has already practiced trial attacks on a scale model of the Bushehr reactor in the Negev desert and as UPI Intelligence Watch has previously reported, U.S. Special Forces in Florida have already practiced war games with the aim of toppling Iran's theocratic Islamic Republic government.

Iranian leaders see the rapid development of their own nuclear deterrent as essential for their regime's survival and the protection of their people. They regard nuclear-armed Israel as their No. 1 enemy and note that under the Bush administration, the U.S. military was used -- and had the capability -- to topple the regime of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in only three weeks with less than 300 soldiers killed in the campaign.

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Islamic Republic's founding father, lost at least half a million Iranian lives -- some estimates go as high as a million -- protecting Iran from Iraq during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war. The outcome of the 2004 Iraq war, therefore, intensified the fear Iranian leaders already had that they would be at the United States and Israel's mercy if they did not develop their own nuclear weapons as quickly as possible.

Iranian leaders in recent months have publicly warned that they would retaliate with all the force they could muster not just against Israel but also against the United States if the IAF knocked out the Bushehr reactor.

Bush administration policymakers, dominated by hawks who routinely despise the traditional Middle East experts at the State Department, privately dismiss such threats as bravado. They appear to be guided by the historic precedent of the successful Israeli air attack that destroyed Saddam's French-built Osiris nuclear reactor in Iraq in 1981 before it could come on line.

But Iran is not Iraq and 2004 is not 1981. Currently, 140,000 over-stretched and exhausted U.S. troops are deployed in neighboring Iraq fighting a rapidly spreading major insurrection that Bush administration planners never anticipated and still have developed no strategy for getting under control.

President George W. Bush has been notably silent on the specifics of what he is going to do about Iraq in his re-election campaign. By contrast, Iranian leaders have not been at all reticent in threatening retaliation against U.S. forces in neighboring Iraq if the United States or Israel attacks their new reactor.

Rowhani's comments therefore suggest the prospects for the European Big three initiative succeeding are not good. But if it fails, a very serious confrontation between America and Iran will probably follow very soon.