The disclosure of a second uranium enrichment site in Iran has led the Obama administration to shift the emphasis in its dealings with the Islamic republic -- away from engagement and toward building an international consensus for sterner action against Tehran.
The effort to directly engage Iran was a hallmark of the early months of the administration, with President Obama offering a televised greeting in honor of the Persian New Year and sending private letters to the country's supreme leader. But the gestures went largely unreciprocated. Now, while not shutting the door on engagement entirely, the United States and its allies plan to forcefully press the case that Tehran has been caught, red-handed, in yet another violation of international rules.
Officials hope that the pressure -- to be applied at previously scheduled talks Thursday in Geneva -- will force Iran into a broader discussion about its program and then into a serious set of negotiations.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, sharing the stage with Obama at the Group of 20 summit in Pittsburgh, said Friday that time is running out for Iran to avoid answering questions.
December deadline
"Everything must now be put on the table," he said bluntly. "Let us not allow the Iranian leaders to buy time while the centrifuges are turning. And if by December there is no significant change in policy on the part of the Iranian leaders, sanctions will have to be taken."
The talks in Switzerland will involve diplomats from Iran, as well as those from the United States, France, Britain, Germany, Russia and China. U.S. officials, in particular, appear determined to make clear that tougher action against Iran should not be seen solely as "made in America" but rather as the collective will of other countries involved in the effort to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.
In his comments Friday, Obama took a strikingly less strident tone than either Sarkozy or British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, suggesting a deliberate strategy to entice Russia and China -- skeptics of sanctions.
Obama said that since the start of his administration, he has argued that "by keeping the path of diplomacy open, that would actually strengthen world unity and our collective efforts to then hold Iran accountable.
"I think you're starting to see the product of that strategy unfold during the course of this week," he told reporters.
Indeed, Russia's initial reaction to the new Iranian disclosure was unusually forceful.
Russia calls for probe
"Iran's construction of a uranium enrichment plant violates decisions of the United Nations Security Council," according to an official statement from the Kremlin, which demanded that the International Atomic Energy Agency "investigate this site immediately" and that Iran "cooperate with this investigation."
Iran has denied that the newly discovered site represents a violation of its international obligations, so the Kremlin's dismissal of that claim must have been particularly gratifying to Washington. During the Bush administration, Russia -- after much haggling -- agreed three times to support U.N. Security Council resolutions imposing sanctions on Iran, but it insisted on watering them down and then would claim the sanctions were not effective.
Now the question is whether Russia -- which has long had close ties with Iran -- will be prepared to take even tougher action if Tehran resists full disclosure, such as canceling fuel shipments to the Bushehr reactor, which Moscow constructed.
"So much depends on the Russians," said George Perkovich, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He noted that sanctions to date have been used in an attempt to change Iran's behavior, without much success. Now, tougher sanctions may need to be used as punishment.
China probably remains the most difficult obstacle to broad new international sanctions. The Chinese reaction on Friday was much weaker than Kremlin's.
"We hope that the IAEA will deal with the matter according to its terms of reference and its mandate," Ma Zhaoxu, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said in a brief statement. "It is also our hope that Iran will cooperate with the IAEA on this matter."
Chinese official: Negotiate
Another official, He Yafei, the vice foreign minister, stressed the need for negotiations. "You talk about punishment, and personally I don't like the word 'punishment,' and I think all issues can only be solved through dialogue and negotiation," he told reporters.
London's Financial Times reported Tuesday that Chinese state companies this month began supplying refined gasoline to Iran and now provide up to one-third of the country's imports, effectively filling the gap left by such companies as BP and India's Reliance as they stopped selling gasoline to Iran in the past year. Iran is one of the world's biggest oil producers, but it does not have enough refineries, forcing it to rely on gasoline imports for nearly one-quarter of its consumption.
Lawmakers in Congress have pressed for new sanctions on Iran to include a ban on gasoline imports, but the rush by Chinese companies to sell to Iran demonstrates how difficult it might be to erect an effective sanctions regime. Moreover, within a couple of years, Iran will have improved its refining capacity to such an extent that it may no longer need to import gasoline, said Ray Takeyh, a Council on Foreign Relations scholar who until recently was a senior adviser on Iran at the State Department.
In any case, he said, increased sanctions are unlikely to influence Iran's thinking.
Sanctions best option
"I just don't think it will fundamentally change the Iranian regime's priorities," Takeyh said. "My gut feeling is the regime is willing to absorb that cost" to acquire nuclear weapons.
But for the Obama administration, sanctions are the best option.
The discovery of the secret plant, after all, suggests that any military action to eliminate Iran's nuclear program will not solve the problem; another plant can always be built in secret.
In an interview to be broadcast Sunday on CNN, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said that if Iran's program were destroyed by force, it would take the country one to three years to get it running again.
"The reality is there is no military option that does anything more than buy time," he said.
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