U.S. Says Sanctions Hurt Iran Nuclear Program

NYTimes, ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — Iran’s ability to produce a nuclear weapon has been delayed by sanctions, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said here on Monday, the strongest and most public claim by the Obama administration that its pressure campaign is hampering Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

“Iran has had technological problems that have made it slow down its timetable,” Mrs. Clinton said a televised town-hall meeting at a university in this Persian Gulf emirate. “The sanctions are working,” she added. “Their program, from our best estimate, has been slowed down.”

Her blunt statement, which comes after similar comments by Israeli and European officials, is sure to color the debate in the Middle East. Iran’s neighbors have watched its drive for nuclear status with increasing alarm, with some pressing the United States to act against Tehran soon.

Mrs. Clinton did not detail the problems with Iran’s program, how long a delay they might cause, or the precise sources of her information. But she argued that the difference between a one-year development cycle and a three- or four-year cycle does not alter the strategic choices that confront Iran’s neighbors or the rest of the world.

Speaking to students on the first day of a four-day visit to the region, Mrs. Clinton urged Arab states not to waver in enforcing sanctions. Abu Dhabi and Dubai, where she traveled later on Monday, have curtailed their banking relationships with Iran, under pressure from the United States.

“If Iran gets a nuclear weapon,” Mrs. Clinton said, “won’t you believe you have to have a nuclear weapon too?”

Raising the prospect of a calamitous nuclear arms race in the Middle East, she said, “It’s first and foremost in the interests of the region to persuade Iran not to pursue nuclear weapons.”

Iran has repeatedly asserted that its nuclear development program is for peaceful civilian purposes.

Last week, the departing director of Israel’s intelligence service, Meir Dagan, said he believed Iran would not be able to make a bomb until 2015, at the earliest, “because of measures that have been deployed against them.”

There is evidence of computer sabotage from an unknown source that has caused glitches in the functioning of the centrifuges that Iran uses to enrich uranium. American officials have also said that Iran is having trouble obtaining materials like carbon fiber to build the centrifuges.

The administration says the sanctions are squeezing Iran’s leaders in other ways, depriving them of access to financial markets and turning the Iranian state shipping line into a pariah in foreign ports.

Although Mrs. Clinton’s remarks were the most public statement of the effect of sanctions on Iran’s program, in written testimony to the House Foreign Affairs Committee last December, the undersecretary of state for political affairs, William J. Burns, said, “Sanctions have hindered Iran’s development of a nuclear capability and the means to deliver them.”

Mrs. Clinton’s trip has other elements – including a stop Monday at a solar-energy research facility – but her meetings have been dominated by what to do about Iran. The fear of Gulf leaders about a nuclear Iran was palpable in the diplomatic cables made public by WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy group.

Mrs. Clinton said the success of the sanctions may have bought the international community some additional breathing room. But she seemed determined to avoid complacency. “We have time, but not a lot of time,” she said to three female hosts of a program called “Sweet Talk.”

Aside from a soft-ball question about how Mrs. Clinton met her husband at law school, there was little sweet talk on the program, much of which revolved around the threat from Iran and the administration’s fruitless efforts to broker a peace agreement in the Middle East.

Mrs. Clinton continually linked the two issues, accusing Iran of stoking the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians as a way of deflecting attention from its nuclear activities.

“If they can shift attention away from their own internal decisions about whether or not to pursue nuclear weapons, they will be very happy about that,” she said, adding, “We cannot let that attention get diverted.”

Despite the recent setbacks, she said the United States remained committed to a two-state solution. Direct negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians fell apart late last year because of a deadlock over the construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

On Sunday, tensions were inflamed further when Israel began bulldozing the Shepherd’s Hotel, a decaying, but symbolic building in East Jerusalem once owned by Palestinians, to make way for new Jewish apartments. She said in a statement that the demolition “contradicts the logic of a reasonable and necessary agreement between the parties on the status of Jerusalem.”

Speaking here, she said, “It is hard for both the Palestinians and the Israelis to have enough trust and confidence in the other to take the risks for peace. Part of what I am trying to do is to build up outside support for these tough decisions.”