Iran Rebuff of U.N. Likely, U.S. Official Says

A senior State Department official said Thursday that he expected Iran to reject a U.N.-backed entreaty to end its nuclear enrichment program and said the U.S. would quickly press for international sanctions against Tehran if the Aug. 31 deadline was not met.

Undersecretary of State R. Nicholas Burns, the Bush administration’s point man on Iran, said he believed the United States had the backing of fellow permanent members of the United Nations Security Council for economic and diplomatic sanctions and would push for them to be imposed early next month if Tehran failed to halt uranium enrichment at its Natanz facility.

“We would want to move very quickly,” Burns said of the effort to win approval of sanctions. “They will be well deserved.”

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and foreign ministers from the other four permanent members of the Security Council, as well as Germany, agreed June 1 to offer a package of incentives to persuade Iran to end its enrichment program and allow inspections by international monitors.

That offer was followed by a council resolution at the end of July calling on Iran to respond to the terms by the end of August or face sanctions. Pressure was growing on Tehran when the war in Lebanon broke out last month, and some analysts speculate that Iran capitalized on the conflict to deflect attention from the nuclear issue.

But Burns said he believed the war between Israel and Hezbollah, a Lebanese militant group established and supplied by Iran, had strengthened the hand of the U.S. in the nuclear standoff because it laid bare Tehran’s larger ambitions to gain power in the region.

“I think there is greater concern now about the role of Iran in the Middle East than there had been before,” Burns said during a meeting of defense writers.

“A lot of people believe Iran wishes to be the dominant power in the region, which is one reason, perhaps, it is seeking the nuclear weapon capability.”

Iran has given mixed signals on whether it will respond by the U.N.-set date. Iranian leaders initially indicated they would answer by a self-imposed Aug. 22 deadline, but they were angered by the U.N. resolution, seeing it as a threat, and later indicated they might not respond at all.

The regime has indicated it would not abandon its nuclear ambitions, which it has characterized as purely for civilian use.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reiterated that stance Thursday during a visit to the northwestern Iranian town of Namin. According to the semiofficial Fars News Agency, he dismissed the resolution and said Iran might never give up its nuclear program.

“They must know that the entire Iranian nation is determined to maintain its right of access to peaceful nuclear technology and that Iranians’ support for the state’s nuclear stances is rock-solid,” Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying.

Despite Iran’s initial receptiveness to the incentives package, Burns said recent statements by the Iranian president had led him to believe Tehran would not accept the offer.

“If you look at what Ahmadinejad has said over the last couple of weeks, I assume that they intend to continue with their enrichment program,” he said. “There will be an answer.”

Although the resolution passed 14 to 1, Russia and China are reluctant to impose sanctions immediately and have backed away from language that would have made them automatic. As a result, a failure by Iran to meet the Aug. 31 deadline would lead to a new round of debate at the U.N.

The U.S., Britain, France, Russia and China make up the permanent members of the council, which also includes 10 rotating members. Burns said he did not believe it would be necessary to pressure Russia and China into agreeing to sanctions.

“I don’t think it’s a question of what the United States will have to do to pressure countries,” Burns said. “We have an agreement with Russia and China and with the other members of the council that we will go to ... sanctions.”

There is no list of agreed-upon punishments, State Department spokesman Tom Casey said. But U.S. officials have indicated that at least initially, they would avoid measures that would directly affect ordinary Iranians, instead targeting government leaders through travel restrictions and the freezing of assets.