White House Quiet on Report About Iran?s Nuclear Efforts

Morteza Nikoubazl/Reuters

The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, an elite military force, controls Iran's nuclear activities as well as wide portions of the Iranian economy.

WASHINGTON ? When American intelligence agencies concluded four years ago that Iran had suspended efforts to build a nuclear weapon in 2003, the findings undercut the Bush administration?s arguments for harsher international sanctions or even, from its more hawkish quarters, military intervention.

Now, with the International Atomic Energy Agency detailing what it calls credible evidence of Iran?s continuing efforts to design a nuclear warhead and install it on a ballistic missile, President Obama faces a problem over how to respond ? even as his options are more limited than ever.

Even though the report was in the works for weeks, and American intelligence officials contributed to it, the administration?s reaction after its release on Tuesday was strikingly muted, both in public and in private, given the high diplomatic and military stakes of Iran?s pursuit of nuclear weaponry.

That reflected the White House?s reluctance to fuel a war of words ? including the openly discussed possibility of an Israeli pre-emptive strike ? but also a careful strategy to allow the agency?s report to speak for itself in hopes that it will intensify economic and diplomatic pressure on Iran, administration officials said.

Officials said that they were considering additional sanctions and ways to close loopholes in the existing ones, promising to do so in coordination with European and other allies in the days and weeks ahead.

The measures, one official said, could be more stringent than existing sanctions on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the elite military force that controls Iran?s nuclear activities as well as wide areas of the Iranian economy.

The United States already enforces a range of United Nations and unilateral sanctions against Iran, which Mr. Obama last week described as part of ?unprecedented international pressure? against its government. Those include sanctions on the guard corps and several of its senior leaders.

Calls for additional sanctions intensified on Capitol Hill after the United States broke up what prosecutors called an Iranian-backed plot to kill the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States ? a scheme so bizarre that some countries questioned it. At the same time, however, officials said that more sweeping sanctions against Iran?s central bank ? as members of Congress have proposed ? or against its oil and gas exports could disrupt the world?s economy at a time when the United States and Europe are already mired in economic crises. It is also not clear if they would win support from Russia and China, veto-wielding members of the United Nations Security Council.

?We?re going to study it,? the State Department?s spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland, said in the administration?s only public comments on the findings. ?We are not prepared to speak about any next steps at this point.?

Unlike the findings contained in the National Intelligence Estimate in 2007, the latest report does not fundamentally reshape the debate here over how to manage Iran?s nuclear ambitions, despite calls from Republicans in Congress and on the presidential campaign trail for tougher action.

It has long been the stated policy of Mr. Obama and his predecessors to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, and while the nuclear monitoring agency did not predict when that might happen, the issue of how to accomplish the goal has now risen to the top of the list of foreign threats facing the president as he wages his re-election campaign in the next year.

For now, according to officials, an American military response is not under discussion, though presumably intelligence operations aimed at undermining Iran?s effort continue in earnest.

The administration clearly hopes the agency?s report, backed by intelligence from nine other countries in addition to the United States, will bolster international pressure and begin to have an effect on Iranian strategy. Officials also hope the report will refute Iran?s claims of American and Israeli plotting against what Iran says is peaceful civilian research.

But there is still no global consensus behind draconian new measures. Russia, for example, reacted angrily to the release of the report?s findings, saying it jeopardized efforts to restart negotiations with Iran.

Russia and China have made it clear they will not vote in the Security Council for any more sanctions, leaving any international effort divided from the start. NATO?s intervention in Libya after both nations abstained on resolutions against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi?s bloody crackdown have only hardened their positions.

Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=fc15746cbed972271f896a5386ccaba8

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