One of the most ridiculous headlines of the day: UN Partly Clears Iran on Nuke Issue, Doubts Remain.

VIENNA (Reuters) - The U.N. nuclear watchdog partly cleared Iran on Monday of charges it tried to make a nuclear bomb, a day after Tehran promised Europe it would freeze what critics said was an atomic weapons program.

Diplomats said this was a clear victory for Iran and would make it tough for Washington to force the United Nations’ agency to refer Tehran’s case to the U.N. Security Council this month.

But the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) did not dismiss the U.S. view that Tehran is secretly developing nuclear weapons, saying it could not rule out covert activities in Iran.

In a bid to ease international concern about its nuclear ambitions, Iran said it would stop converting uranium from Nov. 22. Tehran promised the IAEA it would suspend all uranium enrichment and processing activities as part of a deal with the European Union to avert any U.N. Security Council sanctions.

“All the declared nuclear material in Iran has been accounted for, and therefore such material is not diverted to prohibited activities,” the IAEA report said, language which diplomats said clearly referred to possible work on weapons.

So Iran is “partly cleared?” Based on their own declarations of how much nuclear material they have?

Why do I find this somewhat less than totally reassuring?

And the bit about Tehran promising the IAEA to stop enriching uranium? How does that square with this paragraph, from later in the same article?

Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, Hassan Rohani, said Iran would never renounce enrichment, a process of purifying uranium for use as fuel in power plants or weapons, and declared that the Europeans had assented to that goal.

But a Western diplomat close to the EU-Iran talks disagreed.

“We still want Iran’s uranium enrichment program terminated,” he said, adding that ending Iran’s ability to make bomb-grade uranium and plutonium would be a principal EU goal.