THE election of a hardline religious President of Iran is bad news for the West’s attempts to talk the regime down from its nuclear ambitions.

But until Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said a bit more about his intentions, it is impossible to know just how serious the implications might be.

Britain, France and Germany, the three countries that have taken on the burden of negotiating with Tehran over its nuclear programme, had prepared themselves for the election of a moderate, someone they could probably “do business with”. Iran’s choice of a hardliner — and one whose views on foreign policy are largely unexplored — has left them startled and uncertain of the next steps.

The first European comments on the election of the former Tehran mayor were cool. Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, demanded that Iran take “early steps to address international concerns about its nuclear programme”.

His French counterpart Philippe Douste-Blazy said that Iran should continue the talks “with the aim of suspending nuclear activities”, and in Germany Joschka Fischer said that Iran had to demonstrate its work was only for peaceful purposes.

Hamid Reza Asefi, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, said that Europe “should stop making inappropriate comments” and “send respectful, congratulatory messages”.

In his remarks, Mr Asefi dismissed fears that Iran would cancel the talks completely, saying “our policy will not change with the change of a president”.

But he gave warning that the election had left Iran “more capable of confronting challenges, and the Europeans have to take this into consideration”.

There is, at least, a breathing space of two months in which Europe can take stock.

The next scheduled step is that Europe will submit to Tehran by early August the outline of the nuclear programme it considers Iran could possess without alarming the world.

But even before Mr Ahmadinejad’s election, a clash was looming. Europe insists that Iran should not master every step of making its own nuclear fuel, which would also give it the ability to make weapons.

Mr Ahmadinejad, in one of his few comments on the nuclear programme, has insisted that it should do so.

Those in the West trying to be optimistic about the prospects for the talks make these points:

He has won the election on an appeal to national pride — and much rests on the nuclear programme.

The next meeting of European and Iranian ministers may well come in the margins of the UN General Assembly in New York in September, after Iran has had a chance to digest Europe’s next proposals. The nature of Mr Ahmadinejad’s leadership will be clearer by then — but there are unfortunately plenty of reasons for gloom.

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