"There's no question that U.S. President Bush wants to resolve the Iranian issue diplomatically," said U.S. Under Secretary of State John Bolton.
The United States accuses Iran of secretly developing atomic weapons and wants the International Atomic Energy Agency to report Tehran to the U.N. Security Council for what it says are violations of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
"The evidence ... points to an Iranian nuclear weapons program," Bolton said in a telephone interview.
Iran denies wanting the bomb and says its nuclear program is intended solely for the peaceful generation of electricity.
The hawkish Bolton was responding to comments from several analysts at U.S. think tanks, who said that Washington was not interested in resolving the crisis with Iran.
"They (U.S. hard-liners) are not interested in resolving the crisis or changing regime behavior; they want to change the regime," said Joseph Cirincione, head of nonproliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. "Evidence that highlights the Iranian threat is promoted; evidence that explains Iranian behavior is belittled," he said.
While criticizing Iran for repeatedly withholding information and hiding activities from the IAEA, the agency's chief Mohamed ElBaradei has said repeatedly "the jury is still out" on whether Iran has a covert military atomic program. Equipment the IAEA has found in Iran are all "dual-use" and can be used for military and civilian purposes.
Bolton said that at five quarterly meetings of the IAEA Board of Governors, beginning in June 2003, the United States has consistently pushed the agency to report Iran to the Security Council, which has the power to impose sanctions.
"If that's not a diplomatic initiative, I don't know what is," he said, rejecting the suggestion that Washington was planning regime change for Iran as it did in Iraq. He also said the IAEA board should do the right thing and report Tehran's NPT breaches to the Security Council when it meets next month.
U.S. Smear Campaign?
One Vienna-based diplomat who follows the IAEA expressed concern that hard-liners from the United States and some of its allies were conducting a smear campaign against Iran that was similar to what it did to Iraq before the 2003 U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein.
No evidence has surfaced to support U.S. and British claims that Saddam had revived Iraq's clandestine nuclear weapons program and was sitting on caches of deadly chemical and biological toxins — a key justification for the war.
David Albright, a former U.N. weapons inspector and president of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) believes Tehran wants to keep the nuclear option open but said the United States had a weak case for its view that Tehran is rushing to complete an atomic bomb.
"They have weak evidence. I think even (the U.S. hard-liners) are worried they don't have a case," Albright said, adding that the U.S. policy of confronting and isolating Iran was "bankrupt" and might push Iran to rush to get the bomb. "The hard-liners in the U.S. could really trigger Iran to race to get a nuclear weapon," he added.
Instead, Washington should get behind France, Britain, and Germany, who are attempting to persuade Iran to abandon its weapons-grade plutonium and uranium production capabilities in exchange for economic and technological "carrots," Albright concluded. Without those capabilities, they cannot get a bomb.
Bolton said Washington agreed with the Europeans' objective, which is ensuring that Iran remains without nuclear weapons. However, he said Washington wants to achieve this by increasing the pressure on Iran and reporting it to the Security Council.