Obama to Iran: Come clean

PITTSBURGH — President Barack Obama on Friday said Iran is speeding down a path to confrontation and demanded that Tehran quickly "come clean" on all nuclear efforts and open a previously unacknowledged uranium enrichment facility for close international inspection.

He said he would not rule out military action if the Iranians refuse.

Obama joined the leaders of Britain and France in accusing the Islamic republic of clandestinely building an underground plant to make nuclear fuel that could be used to build an atomic bomb. Iranian officials acknowledged the facility but insisted it had been reported to nuclear authorities as required.

"Iran's action raised grave doubts" about its promise to use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes only, Obama said at a news conference at the conclusion of the Group of 20 summit.

Obama, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy called for Iran to submit to international demands that it halt uranium enrichment and fully open its nuclear program to inspectors.

"The international community has no choice today but to draw a line in the sand," Brown said.

Obama said a telling moment could come Thursday when Iran meets with the U.S., Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany to discuss the nuclear issue.

"Iran is on notice that when we meet with them on Oct. 1, they are going to have to come clean and they are going to have to make a choice" between interna-tional isolation and giving up any aspirations to becoming a nuclear power, he said. If they refuse to give ground, they will stay on "a path that is going to lead to confrontation."

In an early-morning announcement about the secret Iranian facility, Obama said, "Iran is breaking rules that all nations must follow. The size and configuration of this facility is inconsistent with a peaceful program."

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said his country had done nothing wrong and Obama would regret his accusations.

"If I were [President] Obama's adviser, I would definitely advise him to refrain making this statement because it is definitely a mistake," Ahmadinejad told Time magazine Friday in an interview in New York that took place even as Obama was publicly revealing the plant's existence. "It would definitively be a mistake."

At a news conference in New York, Ahmadinejad said the plant wouldn't be operational for 18 months but sidestepped a question about whether Iran had sufficient enriched uranium to manufacture a nuclear weapon.Still, he said such armaments "are against humanity, they are inhumane" and anyone who pursues them "is retarded politically."

The head of Iran's nuclear program suggested U.N. inspectors would be allowed to visit the site. Ali Akbar Salehi called the facility "a semi-industrial plant for enriching nuclear fuel" that is not yet complete, but he gave no other details, according to the state news agency IRNA.

SHROUDED IN SECRECY

The plant, near the holy city of Qom southwest of Tehran, would be about the right size to enrich enough uranium to produce one or two bombs a year, but inspectors must get inside to know what is actually going on, one U.S. official said.

U.S. intelligence officials described the plant as located in series of tunnels deep within a mountain on a base belonging to Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps.

A senior U.S. administration official, who demanded anonymity for discussing intelligence, described it as "a very heavily protected, very heavily disguised facility."

The plant "is under the management of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, but its existence is unknown to all but the most senior officials," one official said.

Asked about the certainty of U.S. intelligence, the official said that "we have excellent clandestine collection" and "multiple, independent sources ... that allow us to corroborate. We are highly confident that the facility isfor uranium enrichment."

Iran acknowledged the existence of the facility for the first time Monday, in a letter to the Vienna, Austria-based International Atomic Energy Agency. The letter said "a new pilot fuel enrichment plant is under construction in the country," said Marc Vidricaire, a spokesman for the agency. "The letter stated that the enrichment level would be up to 5 percent." That level is far below the enrichment level needed for nuclear weapons.

But White House officials said Western intelligence agencies have known about the facility for several years and believe that Iran acknowledged its existence Monday in an attempt to head off intense criticism that they knew was coming.

"We believe that the Iranians learned that the secrecy of the facility had been compromised," a senior White House official said Friday morning. "We've been aware of this facility for several years, building up a case so that we had very strong evidence."

At his Pittsburgh news conference, Obama appeared to hold out limited hope for Thursday's meeting, which will be the first of its kind in more than a year. Iran has said its nuclear program should not be on the agenda.

"When we find that diplomacy does not work, we will be in a much stronger position to, for example, apply sanctions that have bite," Obama said. "That's not the preferred course of action. I would love nothing more than to see Iran choose the responsible path."

He said he was confident in the reliability of the intelligence information about Iran's secret nuclear facilities.

"This was the work product of three intelligence agencies, not just one," Obama said. "They checked over this work in a painstaking fashion."

Obama said he was especially pleased that Russia and China agreed with him that Iran must live up to its obligations under international rules on nuclear activities.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, at his own news conference in Pittsburgh, urged Iran to cooperate and "demonstrate its good intentions" at Thursday's meeting and in allowing inspections. "We call on Iran to show maximum cooperation with the IAEA on this issue," he said, referring the International Atomic Energy Agency.

LIMITED OPTIONS

Beyond tougher economic sanctions, options for acting against Iran are limited and perilous. Iran's facilities are spread around the country and well hidden, making an effective military response difficult.

Asked about the prospect of using military force to stop Iran from getting the bomb, Obama said, "With respect to the military, I've always said that we do not rule out any options when it comes to U.S. security interests, but I will also re-emphasize that my preferred course of action is to resolve this in a diplomatic fashion. It's up to the Iranians to respond."

Defense Secretary Robert Gates, speaking Friday on CNN's State of the Union, said it would be a mistake to rule out military action, but he also said there was still room to pursue diplomacy.

"The reality is, there is no military option that does anything more than buy time," Gates said, adding that the U.S. believes Iran could have a nuclear weapon within one to three years. "And the only way you end up not having a nuclear-capable Iran is for the Iranian government to decide that their security is diminished by having those weapons, as opposed to strengthened."

Brown called the Iranian nuclear program "the most urgent proliferation challenge that the world faces today" and accused Iran of "serial deception" over manyyears. He said the level of Iran's deception and the scale of its breach of international commitments "will shock and anger the whole international community, and it will harden our resolve."

"We will not let this matter rest," Brown said. "And we are prepared to implement further and more stringent sanctions. ... Iran must abandon any military ambitions for its nuclear program."

Sarkozy said Iran has until December to comply with demands for a fuller accounting of its program or face tough new sanctions.

On Capitol Hill, three senators - Democrat Evan Bayh of Indiana, Republican Jon Kyl of Arizona and independent Joe Lieberman of Connecticut - issued a joint statement condemning Iran.

"Given Iran's consistent pattern of deceit, concealment and bad faith, the only way to force Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions is to make absolutely clear to the regime in Tehran that its current course will carry catastrophic consequences," the senators said. "We must leave no doubt that we are prepared to do whatever it takes to stop Iran's nuclear breakout."

Iran had previously acknowledged having only the one uranium enrichment plant, under international monitoring, and had denied allegations of undeclared nuclear activities.

Information for this article was contributed by Charles Babington, Robert Burns, George Jahn, Ben Feller, Foster Klug, Lynn Berry, Michael Fischer, Nasser Karimi, Ben Judah, John Heilprin, Pamela Hess, Desmond Butler, Paisley Dodds, Deborah Seward and Charles J. Hanley of The Associated Press; by Catherine Dodge, Roger Runningen, Kate Andersen Brower, Tony Capaccio, Hans Nichols, Nicholas Johnston, Dune Lawrence, Lyubov Pronina, Bill Varner, Janine Zacharia, Andrew Atkinson, Craig Stirling and Ali Sheikholeslami of Bloomberg News and by Michael D. Shear, Karen DeYoung, William Branigin, Debbi Wilgoren, Glenn Kessler and Thomas Erdbrink of The Washington Post.