(Adds U.S. diplomat on Turkey in eighth-11th paragraphs, Petraeus on Iran threats in 12th-15th.)

By Viola Gienger

Source: Bloomberg BusinessWeek

March 17, 2010

U.S. Army General David Petraeus dismissed a suggestion that the Obama administration has decided that Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon is inevitable and the strategy should be to contain the threat.

“I’m not aware of a conclusion being made at the policy level,” Petraeus told the House Armed Services Committee in Washington today, in response to a question from Representative Trent Franks, an Arizona Republican.

Franks said he was concerned the administration has reached an “unstated conclusion or position” that Iran will gain a nuclear weapon and that the strategy should shift to containing the potential danger rather than preventing it.

The U.S. is working with Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany to persuade Iran to give up enriching uranium, a process that can lead to an atomic bomb. While Iran says it is pursuing enrichment for non-military uses such as energy, its regime hasn’t taken up offers aimed at meeting that goal in other ways.

Franks said accepting Iran having a nuclear weapon would be a “dangerous conclusion.”

“There are calculations being made in the world at this point that are beginning to take into consideration the potential hegemony that Iran would gain if they were able to become a nuclear-armed nation,” he said.

Petraeus, who oversees the Defense Department’s operations in the Middle East and Central Asia as head of the military’s Central Command, has said the U.S. shouldn’t let up on pressuring Iran to abandon any pursuit of nuclear-arms capability.

Sanctions Effort

The Obama administration is trying to win enough support on the United Nations Security Council for another round of international sanctions to heighten the pressure on Iran after almost a year of diplomatic overtures.

Turkey, which shares a border with Iran, is among the Security Council members without veto power that the U.S. nevertheless seeks to bring along to demonstrate unified international condemnation of Iranian actions.

Philip Gordon, assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasia, cautioned today that Turkey shouldn’t pursue its goal of avoiding problems with neighbors “uncritically or at any price.”

“Turkey has international responsibilities that extend beyond its immediate neighborhood,” Gordon told an audience at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “While the international community has sought to present a single, coordinated message to Iran’s government, Turkey has at times sounded a different note.”

Turkish Decision

Turkey’s decision in November to abstain from a vote at the UN’s atomic-energy agency didn’t advance the goal of a peaceful diplomatic resolution, Gordon said, according to prepared remarks.

Turkish officials have said they are helping by maintaining contacts with the government in Tehran.

Petraeus said Iran “poses the major state-level threat to regional stability.” In addition to the threat of a potential nuclear-weapons capacity, Iran “continues to arm, fund, train, equip and direct proxy extremist elements in Iraq, Lebanon and Gaza and, to a lesser degree, in Afghanistan,” Petraeus told the committee.

Internal turmoil in the wake of the disputed re-election last year of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has “resulted in greater reliance than ever on Iran’s security services to sustain the regime’s grip on power,” he said.

Iran wields influence beyond its borders through the militants it supports elsewhere, the missile technology it is developing and the prospect of using techniques such as suicide boats, rather than conventional military means, he said.

“Their air forces are really not that good at all, in part because of sanctions,” Petraeus said. “But their missile forces have been built up quite substantially. Their air defense forces have been built up.”

–Editors: Edward DeMarco, Don Frederick