By Elise Viebeck

Source:

September 19, 2010

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton repeated her commitment to U.S. sanctions on Iran Sunday, and said that the U.S. remains prepared to “engage with” President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on the state’s nuclear program and its support for foreign terrorist organizations Hamas and Hezbollah.

“I think the sanctions that have been endorsed and now are being implemented by the international community demonstrates our engagement,” Clinton told Christiane Amanpour of ABC’s “This Week.” “Because we’ve said to the Iranians all along, ‘We have two tracks. We have the pressure track and we have the engagement, diplomatic track.’ And we still remain open to that diplomacy. ”

“But it’s been very clear that the Iranians don’t want to engage with us,” she said, noting that Iran has not agreed to attend related meetings at the U.N. next week.

She went to argue that increased U.S. sanctions on Iran are affecting the state more deeply than its leaders have allowed.

“They [the sanctions] are biting,” she said. “We hear that from many in the region and beyond … the information we’re getting is that the Iranian regime is quite worried about the impact on their banking system, on their economic growth because they’ve already encountered some tough times.”

“I think they [the sanctions] have and will continue to affect [Iran's] behavior,” she added, rebuffing Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s recent comments dismissing U.S. sanctions as “pathetic” and “worse than a used handkerchief.”

Clinton later expressed her hope that Iran would return to the “P5-plus-one” forum — that is, talks that comprise the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, plus Germany — to discuss its nuclear program, its relationship with Hamas and Hezbollah, and the increasing militarization of its regime.

“We stand ready to engage with Iran, and that’s really the message that I would like to send to the Iranians is that, you know, there’s a way out of the sanctions,” she said. “There’s a way out of increasing opprobrium from the international community.”

“I’m concerned about what I see going on,” she added later. “We are concerned about the nuclear program … We are worried about the direction we see Iran headed.”

She also expressed “relief” at the release of American hiker Sarah Shourd this week, and called on Iran to follow suit with the release of Shourd’s two companions who remain in prison.