WarSclerotic

WASHINGTON The goal of U.S. and other sanctions against Iran is regime collapse, a senior U.S. intelligence official said this week, offering the clearest indication yet that the Obama administration is at least as intent on unseating Iran’s government as it is on engaging with it.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters, said the administration hopes that sanctions “create enough hate and discontent at the street level” that Iranians will turn against their government.

The comments came as the administration readies punitive new sanctions targeting Iran’s central bank and the European Union moves toward strict curbs on Iranian oil imports. The increased pressure is intended to force Iranian officials to heed western demands that they abandon alleged nuclear weapons plans.

But the intelligence official’s remarks pointed to a more profound goal, even as the administration has reiterated its willingness to open a dialogue with Iran. Although designed to pressure a government to change its policies, it is a recognized but generally unspoken reality that economic sanctions usually have far more effect on general populations than on elites.

A senior administration official, speaking separately, acknowledged that public discontent was a likely result of more punitive sanctions against Iran’s already faltering economy. But this official said it was not the administration’s intent to press the Iranian people toward an attempt to oust their government.

“The notion that we’ve crossed into sanctions being about regime collapse is incorrect,” the administration official said.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad dismissed international concerns about an Iranian nuclear weapon this week, calling it “a joke.”

“It’s something to laugh at,” Ahmadinejad said during a visit to Venezuela, the Associated Press reported from Caracas. “It’s clear they’re afraid of our development.”

Although Obama has declined to rule out a military strike against Iran’s nuclear sites to prevent the Islamic Republic from building a nuclear weapon, he has emphasized international diplomacy, which has helped build broad allied support for stringent economic sanctions against Iranian officials, key businesses and now the nation’s central bank.

But Obama has never publicly called for regime change in Iran.

Although Iran has continued developing its nuclear infrastructure, including a recently revealed second uranium enrichment facility, the “pause” in Iran’s direct march toward a weapon continues, the intelligence official said.

“It’s not a technical problem,” he said, adding that Iran has the capability of building a bomb but has not made a political decision to do so.

Israel, the intelligence official said, has “a different opinion. They think (Iran) has already made the decision.

Fear that Israel will take action on its own to thwart Iran’s nuclear ambitions is “a very serious concern,” the intelligence official said. If the Israelis attack, he said, “it is very clear that Iran will retaliate” against Israel and hold the United States ultimately responsible.