Iran Could Face 'Significant Additional Sanctions,' Gates Says

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Friday that world powers will soon impose "significant additional sanctions" on Iran over its failure to engage in talks on its nuclear ambitions.

By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer 

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Gates, speaking to a group of about 300 U.S. soldiers in northern Iraq during a weeklong tour of war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq, played down the prospect of military action against Tehran.

"There are no good options in Iran," he said, in response to a question from a soldier about the prospect of war with the Islamic Republic. "One of the things that weighs on me is that if we have learned anything from Iraq over the past six years is the inherent unpredictability of war."

He said that military strikes "would only buy time, perhaps two or three years," to halt Iran's possible pursuit of a nuclear weapon.

Iran insists that it only wants to develop nuclear expertise for peaceful purposes, but it has refused to return to talks with world powers on restraining its nuclear program. On Oct. 1, in talks in Geneva, Iran signaled that it would return to talks and agree to give up a substantial portion of its stockpile of enriched uranium in exchange for fuel for a medical research reactor.

The Obama administration has pushed for the agreement in an effort to buy time for negotiations, but in recent weeks Iran has walked away from the tentative agreements.

"Frankly Iran's stiffing the international community on some of the proposals that they actually agreed to at the beginning of October, I think has brought the international community, including the Russians and the Chinese, together in a way that they have not been, in terms of significant additional sanctions on the Iranians," Gates said.

President Obama had set a Dec. 31 deadline for Iran to respond to the proposals before he turns to pursuing what Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called "crippling sanctions."

"I think that you are going to see some significant additional sanctions imposed by the international community, assuming that the Iranians don't change course," Gates said.

European Union leaders also warned Iran on Friday that it faced "appropriate measures" if it failed to respond to calls for negotiations. In a draft statement, the 27-nation body said it "expresses its grave concern that Iran has so far done nothing to rebuild confidence of the international community in the exclusively peaceful nature of its nuclear program." EU foreign ministers are expected to approve the draft statement at a Brussels meeting next month.

Gates, who returns to Washington late Friday, met in the morning with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki before flying to Iraq's oil-rich Kurdistan region, for meetings with soldiers and Kurdish officials. Tensions remain high between the Kurds and Iraq's Arab majority, particularly over the division of oil weath and property rights.Gates is urging both sides to reduce the potential for conflict to prevent any delays in U.S. plans to reduce troop levels in the coming months.

kesslerg@washpost.com