“We have reached agreement on a strong draft with the cooperation of both Russia and China,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, without giving any details of the pact. “We plan to circulate that draft resolution to the entire Security Council today. And let me say, Mr. Chairman, I think this announcement is as convincing an answer to the efforts undertaken in Tehran over the last few days as any we could provide.” The agreement was reached by the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China — the five permanent, veto-wielding members of the Security Council — plus Germany. Russia and China have been the most resistant to the American-led efforts to impose new sanctions on Iran.
If the council adopts the resolution, it will represent the fourth round of sanctions intended to induce Iran to cease enriching uranium, comply with all demands from the International Atomic Energy Agency to inspect suspect locations, turn over documents related to suspected weapons research, and allow interviews of Iranian scientists. The previous three rounds failed to force Iran to comply.
Mrs. Clinton announced the agreement on the draft resolution at the opening of a hearing on the Obama administration’s New Start arms control treaty with Russia, an agreement that officials have said helped secure Moscow’s cooperation in ratcheting up pressure on Iran. Administration officials have said that Russia has become more supportive in recent months and that China was the toughest obstacle.
The new treaty with Russia “gives us the credibility to reach agreement as we now have in the United Nations with countries that are concerned about the proliferation represented by Iran,” Mrs. Clinton told the Senate committee.
Senator Chris Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut and senior member of the Foreign Relations Committee, called news of the agreement a “tremendous step forward” and noted that Congress was working on legislation that would impose American-only sanctions on Iran.
“International sanctions make a lot more sense than unilateral,” Mr. Dodd said. “And I think we all agree with that. But we’re not going to retreat from the unilateral sanctions effort.”
The announcement came just a day after Iran said it would ship what is believed to be roughly half of its nuclear fuel to Turkey for further enrichment, in what appeared to be a bid to undercut the American efforts to bring along China and Russia. The offer resembled an accord made with the West last October that fell apart when Iran backtracked.
Mrs. Clinton said the new offer would still leave Iran “in clear violation of its international obligations” because it “is continually amassing newly enriched uranium.” She also criticized what she called the “amorphous timeline for the removal” of the low enriched uranium. Reading the terms, she said, “that could take months of further negotiation and that is just not acceptable to us and to our partners.”
She said the Iranian offer was a clear attempt to undercut the emerging consensus on sanctions. “We don’t believe it was any accident that Iran agreed to this declaration as we are preparing to move forward in New York” with a sanctions resolution intended to “put pressure on Iran which they were trying to somehow dissipate,” she said.
Mrs. Clinton acknowledged the efforts of Brazilian and Turkish leaders who brokered the new agreement with Iran. But she said the six major powers that have joined together to pressure Iran to give up its uranium enrichment program “are proceeding to rally the international community on behalf of a strong sanctions resolution that will, in our view, send an unmistakable message about what is expected from Iran.”
The Turkish prime minister rejected the skepticism about the Iranian offer and pointedly criticized the continued moves toward sanctions by the United States.
“This is the time to discuss whether we believe in the supremacy of law or the law of the supremes and superiors,” he told a press briefing in Madrid. “While they still have nuclear weapons, where do they get the credibility to ask other countries not to have them?”
Iran has said its nuclear development program is intended to produce civilian energy, but American and European officials have pointed to work that seems unrelated to simply producing power and said Tehran has not complied with treaty obligations for permitting unfettered inspections to all of its nuclear facilities.
Iran has been working mightily to ward off new sanctions, sending its foreign minister to the capitals of countries sitting on the Security Council to make the case that the sanctions amount to an American conspiracy to deprive Iran of its right to enrich uranium under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
As the negotiations on the draft resolution were in their final hours on Monday evening, a senior administration official said that one of the most critical sections of the proposed sanctions were modeled on a resolution passed last year against North Korea, after its second nuclear test. That resolution authorized all nations to search cargo ships heading into or out of the country for suspected weapons, nuclear technology or other cargo prohibited by previous United Nations resolutions.
In North Korea’s case, there have already been some modest successes as a result of the resolution, and in one case North Korea turned around one of its ships, and sent it back to port, rather than risk having it boarded and inspected. But North Korea has relatively little trade with the outside world; Iran, because of its oil shipments, has a huge volume of trade. It is unclear how vigorously this provision, if adopted, would be enforced.
Other elements of the sanctions resolution are aimed at Iranian financial institutions, including those that support the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The corps is responsible for overseeing the military aspects of the Iranian nuclear program. But it has also played a central role in suppressing protests against the government, and the Obama administration is betting that the organization is now despised by a large enough portion of the Iranian public that the sanctions may be welcomed by part of Iranian society. That is a big bet, however, because the corps also runs large elements of the country’s infrastructure, including its airports.
David E. Sanger contributed reporting from Washington and Raphael Minder from Madrid.