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

WASHINGTON — 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.