Bush, for his part, has declared in the past that he wants to prevent Iran from enriching uranium even to the point necessary for civilian use, fearing that capability could lead to the ability to produce a bomb.
"Enrichment and reprocessing on Iranian soil ... is not acceptable to the international community," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said last month.
Iran's announcement appeared to be timed to convince the U.N. Security Council that there was no longer any need for the council to press the country to halt its nuclear research program. "They want to be able to present this as a \o7fait accompli\f7," Takeyh said.
Such a defiant declaration would quickly test the U.S. plan to confront Iran with a unified world response. Some countries may be galvanized to more forceful action by the Iranian news. But others, such as Russia, have already been convinced that Iran was going to gain nuclear capability sooner or later. For them, the news may further lessen their appetite for a dispute with Tehran.
Within the United States, the enrichment announcement is likely to bring a challenge to the Bush policy from conservative opponents of containment who have been urging more forceful action, fearing that the administration was taking too much time trying to build a consensus and gradually increasing pressure on Tehran.
U.S. intelligence officials have estimated that Iran is five to 10 years away from being able to develop a nuclear bomb. But even before Tuesday's announcement, Israel had estimated that Iran could gain the knowledge needed to build a bomb within the next few months. Israeli newspapers Tuesday quoted unidentified senior officials as saying that they believe Iran's claims are accurate and in line with Israel's forecasts.
Last month, staff members of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, told foreign diplomats in briefings that they believed the Iranians were moving faster than expected with their small-scale enrichment efforts. They predicted that Tehran might be able to build a bomb in three years.
"If it turns out that the Iranians have been moving a heck of a lot faster than we thought, we're going to have to consider ways to press them sooner," said Patrick Clawson, deputy director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "If it turns out that the Iranians were making a lot of progress, and our estimates were too optimistic, then we've got a problem here."
One U.S. official, however, defended the U.S. estimate, saying that Iran's most recent claims still put it years away from being capable of building a bomb. The Iranian claims and the U.S. predictions still are "broadly consistent," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity when discussing U.S. intelligence estimates.
