Iran Hints at Using Oil as Its Weapon

As the stage was set Wednesday for a high-stakes U.N. Security Council debate next week on possible sanctions for Iran’s nuclear program, Tehran warned the United States that it too could inflict “harm and pain” and hinted its weapon could be oil.

The sharp statement, which followed a warning this week by Vice President Dick Cheney that Iran could face “meaningful consequences,” came on a day when the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency concluded a series of meetings on Iran and forwarded its report to the Security Council.

The report by the International Atomic Energy Agency’s director-general, Mohamed ElBaradei, found that after nearly three years of inspections, the nuclear agency remains unable to rule out the possibility that Iran still has secret nuclear activities, which could include work related to uranium enrichment and efforts to adapt weapons to carry a nuclear bomb.

The IAEA board of governors last month reported Iran to the Security Council pending ElBaradei’s report. The IAEA demanded, among other things, that Tehran cease all nuclear enrichment activities, answer all outstanding questions about its nuclear program and ratify a protocol that allows more wide-ranging inspections. But Iran ignored the demands.

Economic actions are unlikely in the near term from the Security Council. And on Wednesday, the foreign minister of Russia, which has veto power, disparaged their use as a diplomatic tool. Yet the referral of Iran’s case to New York opens a new chapter, one that Iran has sought to avoid.

Iranian officials have warned repeatedly that they may feel forced to respond aggressively if the Security Council takes action against them, but their strongest words were reserved for the United States.

Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran’s ambassador to the IAEA, told the gathered ambassadors in Vienna on Wednesday: “The United States has the power to cause harm and pain, but the United States is also susceptible to harm and pain. So if that is the path that the U.S. wishes to choose, let the ball roll out.”

When asked if Iran, the world’s fourth-largest oil supplier, would use its oil exports as a weapon to punish the West, Javad Vaeedi, deputy head of Iran’s National Security Council, said: “We will not do so now, but if the situation changes we will have to review our oil policies.”

Meanwhile, political affairs Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, testifying before Congress, said Iran “directly threatens vital American interests” and Washington planned “a concerted approach [in the council] ... that gradually escalates pressure on Iran.”

At the same hearing, Robert G. Joseph, undersecretary of State for arms control and international security, said that a nuclear-armed Iran was “intolerable.” Asked whether the administration was prepared to launch a military effort, Joseph replied that President Bush “has made clear that there are no options off the table.”

Tehran might be more willing to use force -- including chemical and biological weapons -- if it believed its nuclear weapons protected it from retaliation, Joseph said. And it could use nuclear weapons “as a powerful tool of intimidation and blackmail,” he added.

In Vienna, U.S. officials took a relatively measured tone. The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations agencies in Vienna, Greg Schulte, said the U.S. was seeking “a considered and incremental” approach. Earlier in the week, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said there would be no attempt to call for sanctions at this point.

As a first step, U.S. officials say they will push to have the Security Council issue a statement by the council’s president -- a rotating post -- urging Iran to cooperate with the IAEA.

Diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they would like to see a deadline for compliance and they will probably ask ElBaradei to issue a report on whether Iran is complying with the demands set by the IAEA board in February.

Washington expects to find ready backing from European Union members of the Security Council for such a step, but Russia and China, who have repeatedly voiced concerns about provoking Iran to the point that it cooperates even less with nuclear inspectors, could delay the proceedings for a week or more, if only to signal their strong opposition to sanctions.

In New York, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei V. Lavrov said Moscow did not believe sanctions would compel Iran to halt its nuclear program and that Russia opposed any hint of military action.

“I don’t think sanctions as a means to solve a crisis have ever achieved a goal in recent history,” he told reporters after speaking with SecretaryGeneral Kofi Annan at U.N. headquarters in New York.

Lavrov said the international discussion of how to deal with Iran’s nuclear ambitions reminded him of the run-up to the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. “It looks so deja vu, you know,” he said. “I don’t believe we should engage in something which might become self-fulfilling prophecy.”

Iran says it needs to conduct research on uranium enrichment to develop civilian nuclear power. The West and Russia fear that Tehran’s ultimate goal is to build nuclear weapons. In 2002, an Iranian opposition group revealed that Iran had pursued a clandestine nuclear program for 18 years. That revelation started an intensive investigation by the IAEA.

Washington’s closest allies overseas, Britain, France and Germany -- which have been negotiating with Iran -- took a restrained line Wednesday. “This is not the end of diplomacy,” they said in a statement to the IAEA board.

ElBaradei admonished all parties to halt the threatening statements and focus on finding a negotiated solution. “We need people to lower the rhetoric. This is an issue that is going to take some time, and it is not going to be solved tomorrow. It’s quite complicated.”

“But everybody understands the need to look for a political solution,” he said.

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Times staff writers Maggie Farley at U.N. headquarters in New York and Paul Richter in Washington contributed to this report.