When European nations resume talks with Iran in Vienna today over that country's nuclear ambitions, two dangerous new factors are in play.

On the one hand, the patience of the Europeans and the United States with Iran is running thin. On the other hand, Iran's newly elected president has shocked a string of nations with some megalomanic pronouncements that, if supported by his people, would plunge Iran back into isolation. The stage is not set for compromise and consensus.

At issue is whether Iran's suspected pursuit of nuclear technology for military, rather than civilian, purposes is to continue or to be curbed. The Tehran regime continues to claim that its processing of uranium for enrichment is purely for peaceful purposes. The European nations and the United States doubt that, pointing to a string of deceptive Iranian actions, including hiding from the International Atomic Energy Agency its secret installations to enrich uranium and produce plutonium that could be used for nuclear weapons.

Britain, France and Germany have been conducting on-again, off-again negotiations with Iran that have produced little progress and raise questions as to whether this is a delaying tactic by the Iranians as they move forward with their nuclear program. The patience of the Western negotiators is running out. In a recent Wall Street Journal article their three foreign ministers declared that if Iran continues on its present path "Central Asia and the Middle East, the world's most volatile areas, may well be destabilized." They have pursued talks in good faith, they say, but Iran has rejected their proposals.

Meanwhile Western nations have been stunned by the confrontational rhetoric of Iran's new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He has called for Israel to be "wiped off the map," and called the Holocaust that caused the death of millions of Jews a "myth." From the foreign ministries of a string of countries have come statements terming the comments irresponsible and unacceptable.