Iran has been elected vice-chair of the Conference on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons at the UN - and the American envoy Christopher Jiu reacted by calling it "more than a disgrace, and a disgrace to the credibility of this conference." Iran has for years ignored its obligations under the treaty and refused to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency - and yet got a seat at the head of the forum on nuclear disarmament.

Iran's ambassador Reza Najafi replied that the American criticism is "baseless and politically motivated" - and pressed the irony: the only country ever to have used a nuclear weapon is now positioning itself as the arbiter of nuclear compliance. That is an argument hard to dismiss with rhetoric alone.

The nuclear dispute is the core of the ongoing conflict. Trump has repeated that Iran can never have a nuclear bomb; Tehran insists that uranium enrichment is peaceful. Both the IAEA and the US intelligence community assessed that Iran ran a nuclear weapons development program until 2003 - after that it gets murky. The Iranian side is now proposing to put off nuclear talks until the humanitarian conflict is solved and the strait is reopened. It's a structure that suits them - they get a breather while the nuclear program continues.

For the region, a nuclear Iran is a scenario every Balkan government quietly watches. Not because of a direct threat, but because of the domino effect - if Iran gets the bomb, Saudi Arabia will want one immediately. A Middle East with more nuclear actors is more dangerous for everyone.