arXiv:2610.04376v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: We prove a Chernoff-exponent guarantee for the output of spectrally initialized batch variational EM after a prescribed iteration budget, without assuming global maximization of its variational objective. The iteration repeatedly estimates the entire block probability matrix and community proportions from the same sparse graph. We consider a fixed number of communities with proportions bounded away from zero and fixed, positive, distinct connectivity profiles; neither assortativity nor full rank is required. The algorithm uses simultaneous softmax updates without sample splitting or posterior thresholding. Its analysis must control the feedback between estimated parameters, soft labels and reused edges at an exponentially small risk scale. We establish a uniform one-step bound over data-dependent soft assignments whose random remainder has exponentially small expectation. Combined with an exponentially reliable regularized spectral initializer, this yields an unconditional expected misclassification rate bounded by $\exp\{-(1-o(1))J_n\}$ throughout the sparse, diverging-degree regime, where $J_n$ is the minimum nodewise Chernoff information. Matching lower bounds establish first-order logarithmic minimax optimality on local parameter spaces allowing unknown connectivity and varying community counts. The algorithm also attains the sharp first-order exact-recovery threshold. Numerical experiments illustrate refinement gains and sensitivity to initialization and imbalance.