December is "a very real deadline" for the international community ahead of possible new sanctions on Iran and its nuclear program, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs warned Tuesday. Earlier Tuesday Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad again rejected a year-end deadline set by the United States to accept a UN-brokered deal aimed at allaying fears over its nuclear program.
"They say we have given Iran until the end of the Christian year. Who are they anyway? It is we who have given them an opportunity," Ahmadinejad said in a speech in the city of Shiraz carried live on state television. Several Iranian officials had already dismissed such a deadline to reach a way out of the nuclear crisis. With a year-end deadline, President Barack Obama's administration has signalled that time is running out for Iran to seize its offer of diplomatic engagement for resolving nuclear and other issues.
It has raised the specter of a fourth round of UN sanctions, but will need to persuade Russia and China to drop their traditional reluctance to consider tougher measures. Iran insists its nuclear programme is solely for civilian purposes and rejects Western suspicions that it is covertly trying to develop a bomb.