Obama says US developing new sanctions for Iran

(AP) — President Barack Obama said Tuesday that Iran remains on an "unacceptable" path to nuclear weapons, despite its denials, and that the U.S. and like-minded countries will soon produce a set of punishing sanctions against the Islamic republic.

Obama and other administration officials expressed disappointment in Iran's latest move, a declaration that it will enrich uranium to a level that puts it on course to producing nuclear material that could be used to build a nuclear bomb. Yet Obama acknowledged that it remains unclear whether he can win sufficient support in the U.N. for tougher sanctions.

The confrontation with Iran is one of Obama's biggest foreign policy challenges. It goes to the heart of his effort to limit the spread of nuclear weapons technology and to offer to negotiate even with the U.S.' fiercest adversaries. So far his strategy has produced little except modest momentum toward a new U.N. scolding of the Iranians.

The president accused Iran of posturing but he pointedly did not close the door on his year-old offer of negotiations.

He spoke with reporters at the White House just hours after Iran announced that it had begun enriching uranium to a level sufficient to fuel a Tehran research reactor that produces medical isotopes for cancer and other patients. The U.S. and the international community are willing to accommodate Iran's need for the isotopes but they have insisted that they be produced with reactor fuel — uranium enriched to 20 percent purity — manufactured outside of Iran.

Under a deal that an Iranian negotiator originally accepted in October, Iran would ship its low-enriched uranium to Russia for further enriching for use in the Tehran reactor. But the Iranians later balked and then rejected that arrangement. On Sunday they announced that they would produce their own higher-enriched uranium, and on Tuesday, Iranian state television said the process began in the presence of inspectors from the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency.

"That indicates to us that, despite their posturing that their nuclear power is only for civilian use, that they, in fact, continue to pursue a course that would lead to weaponization," Obama said. "We are going to be looking at a variety of ways in which countries indicate to Iran that their approach is unacceptable. And the U.N. will be one aspect of that broader effort."

Nicholas Burns, a Harvard professor of diplomacy who spearheaded Iran policymaking during the former President George W. Bush's administration, said the Iranian actions have been deliberately provocative, apparently designed to draw attention away from expected protest marches Thursday to coincide with events marking the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

"They are motivated in part by a desire to change the issue back to the nuclear issue, away from the issue of a lack of democracy and of repression inside Iran," Burns said in a telephone interview. "Given what the Iranians have said over the last 24 hours, the Obama administration and the U.S. have no alternative but to move toward sanctions."

The biggest challenge to gaining meaningful new U.N. sanctions, he said, is persuading China to go along.

Obama said he was sticking to a two-track approach: offering to negotiate, while threatening further pressure. He said the world would welcome an Iranian decision to accept U.N. demands that it live up to its nuclear control obligations.

"And if not, then the next step is sanctions," the president said. "They have made their choice so far, although the door is still open. And what we are going to be working on over the next several weeks is developing a significant regime of sanctions that will indicate to them how isolated they are from the international community as a whole."

Obama said work to broaden economic sanctions applied by the U.N. Security Council is moving along quickly, but he gave no specific timeline. He hinted at a trouble spot, saying China's crucial vote was not assured. As one of five permanent members of the Security Council, China, which has increasingly close economic ties to Iran, can block a resolution by itself.

Obama also said the United Nations penalties are only one part of an international squeeze on Iran, a reference to a sequence of economic strictures that could be applied by the European Union and individual countries over the next several months.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates' spokesman said Gates thinks the United Nations should slap sanctions on Iran in "weeks, not months."

At the State Department, spokesman P.J. Crowley said the administration was setting no timetable for imposing new sanctions. Administration officials, Crowley said, are "continuing to put together our ideas," along with allies and friends.

One such idea, Crowley said, is for Iran to accept an alternative to the October proposal for swapping Iran's low-enriched uranium for higher-enriched material produced in Russia. The U.S. would be willing, alternatively, to help Iran acquire medical isotopes from abroad, thus bypassing the need for it to obtain or produce 20-percent enriched uranium.

Ray Takeyh, a Mideast expert at the Council on Foreign Relations and until last summer a State Department adviser on Iran policy, said it was "bombast" for Iran to announce that it will produce the higher-enriched uranium on its own.

"In a mistaken assumption, they seem to feel that by playing this game of brinksmanship, the international community will blink and supply them with fuel," Takeyh said.

Ivan Oelrich, vice president of the strategic security program at the Federation of American Scientists, said that aside from the question of Iran's intentions, it's ability to enrich uranium — either for electric power or for a bomb — is weaker than many had believed.

"The Iranians really are quite bad at this," Oelrich said in a telephone interview. In his view that means the countries that worry about Iran eventually building nuclear weapons have more time to find a solution than was believed just months ago.

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AP National Security Writer Anne Gearan contributed to this report.