WASHINGTON — President Bush said Tuesday that despite a new intelligence assessment concluding Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program, the country still posed a danger and must stop enriching uranium.
Bush repeated that "all options are on the table" for dealing with Tehran, and he urged world leaders to keep pressure on the government. But diplomats and analysts said the new report lessened the likelihood of a military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities and could hamper the U.S. campaign to win support for new economic sanctions.
"It will be much more difficult to get Russia and China and the reluctant Europeans to go for tough sanctions," said Gary Samore, a top arms control official in the Clinton White House. Samore, director of studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that, although the administration would continue to pursue such penalties, "it will be without much effect."
He predicted that 2008, amid the presidential campaign, would be "a lost year" and that the issue would be left for the next president.
At a White House news conference dominated by questions about Iran, Bush called the National Intelligence Estimate released Monday a "warning signal" and said it lent support to his unyielding approach to Iran.
"This report is not a 'O.K., everybody needs to relax and quit' report," Bush said. "This is a report that says what has happened in the past could be repeated.
"Look, Iran was dangerous, Iran is dangerous, and Iran will be dangerous if they have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon," he said. "The NIE says that Iran had a hidden -- a covert nuclear weapons program. That's what it said. What's to say they couldn't start another covert nuclear weapons program?"
The assessment, representing the consensus of the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, concluded with "high confidence" that Iran had stopped developing nuclear weapon designs and had ended covert efforts in autumn 2003 to produce highly enriched uranium, a key ingredient in a nuclear bomb. It said the agencies had "moderate confidence" that Iran had not resumed the program as of the middle of this year.
Uranium enriched at a lower level can fuel a nuclear power plant; at much higher levels it can be used to build a weapon. Iran has maintained that its enrichment program is intended only to produce electricity.
