U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates says the United States will seek much tougher United Nations sanctions on Iran if that nation spurns the offer of talks on its disputed nuclear program.
Gates says President Barack Obama hopes Iran will come to the table. The United States and several nations want Iran to come clean about what the West suspects is a bomb-making program, and have offered economic and political incentives to get talks started.
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Obama has set a rough deadline of this fall for an answer. Gates says the next step would be harsher and might include a number of punitive measures simultaneously. That would be a departure from the current international policy of gradual sanctions with punishments getting tougher each time Iran falls short.
