Gates takes hard line on Iran

Despite U.S. intelligence findings that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program four years ago, the Bush administration stepped up its efforts to portray Tehran as a threat, with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates insisting that the program could be restarted at any time.

Gates told a gathering of Middle East leaders here today that the Iranian government remained a source of “instability and chaos” that was still hiding its nuclear ambitions from the international community.

Iranian leaders have seized on the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate released Monday, saying it is proof that Tehran’s nuclear program is intended only for peaceful purposes and should undercut Washington’s push for additional sanctions.

But Gates, long viewed as one of the administration’s more restrained voices on Iran policy, called such assertions “a watershed,” saying that if Iran was suddenly embracing U.S. intelligence findings, it was tacitly agreeing to the estimate’s other conclusions -- such as Iranian support for regional terrorist groups and its ambitions to develop ballistic missiles that threaten its neighbors.

“In reality, you cannot pick and choose only the conclusions you like of this National Intelligence Estimate,” Gates said in the conference’s opening address. “The report expresses with greater confidence than ever that Iran did have a nuclear weapons program -- developed secretly, kept hidden for years, and in violation of its international obligations.”

Gates’ comments were notable not only for their contents -- which made a direct appeal to Shiite Iran’s Sunni-led rivals in the region to unite against Tehran’s ambitions -- but also for the setting in which they were delivered and the man who delivered them.

Several of Iran’s most senior officials had been scheduled to attend the conference, an annual gathering sponsored by the London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies, but skipped it at the last minute, without explanation.

In his first year in office, Gates has shown a reluctance to lecture U.S. adversaries in public and has been more dispassionate on Iran than his White House counterparts. But in his speech, the secretary showed none of his earlier restraint, noting the nuclear weapons program that reportedly ran until 2003 and the continuation of uranium enrichment.

The strong words illustrated how concerned the administration has become that the intelligence finding could halt any momentum it had in the United Nations to push through another round of sanctions. Although U.N. Security Council members France and Britain continue to view Tehran with mistrust, Washington was struggling to win over Russia and China even before the NIE report.

Gates called on the international community to not abandon efforts to tighten sanctions, saying only global measures could prevent Iran from restarting its weapons program.

“The United States and the international community must continue -- and intensify -- our economic, financial, and diplomatic pressures on Iran to suspend enrichment and agree to verifiable arrangements that can prevent that country from resuming its nuclear weapons program at a moment’s notice -- at the whim of its most militant leaders,” Gates said. “That should be a matter of grave concern to every government in the world.”

Notably, however, Gates did not discuss possible military action against Iran. Over the last year, it has become routine for administration officials to say that military action always remained an option, even as the White House continued to focus on the diplomatic route.

Gates made no such declaration in his speech, but at the Pentagon, Marine Gen. John F. Sattler, director of strategic plans for the Joint Staff, said Friday that the NIE had not prompted the Pentagon to change any plans.

“I can state that there has been no course correction, slowdown, speed-up, given to us inside the Joint Staff based on the NIE,” Sattler said.

Although Gates said Iran continued to train and support anti-American militias in Iraq and had deployed “lethal weapons” to Iraq and Afghanistan, military leaders say that the flow of weapons from Iran to Iraq may be slowing, possibly as a result of an agreement between those two countries.

Attacks using what the military believes are Iranian-made weapons have not stopped. Army Gen. Carter F. Ham, Joint Staff director for operations, said at a Pentagon news conference that weapons caches containing Iranian munitions are still being found.

“There certainly are other indicators that weapons, munitions and training are still being provided by Iran,” Ham said. “So I would say, I think the jury is still out.”

The reason for the uncertainly, Sattler said, was because the U.S. did not know when the weapons were smuggled.

“We can’t tell what may have moved in and was stockpiled, what may have been done before the declaration was made,” Sattler said.

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peter.spiegel@latimes.com

Times staff writer Julian E. Barnes in Washington contributed to this report.