US turns a corner on Iran ? The left corner.

Gates, under Obama, raises the bar on criteria for U.S. action in Iran
A senior official asserted that President Barack Obama was unlikely to order the destruction of Iran's nuclear weapons facilities.

Instead, Obama was expected to first determine whether a nuclear Iran would constitute a direct threat to the United States.

"I think that the barrier first of all will be are we going to be attacked here at home," Defense Secretary Robert Gates said.In a television interview on March 12, Gates appeared to reverse years of U.S. warnings that it would consider all options, including military, to stop Iran's nuclear weapons program. Instead, Gates asserted that neither Obama nor his successor would rely on U.S. intelligence assessments on whether Iran has already reached the capability to produce atomic bombs.

"He is going to ask a lot of very hard questions," Gates said. "And I think that hurdle is much higher today than it was six or seven years ago."

U.S. intelligence breaks with Israel's on nuclear headway by Iran

The U.S. intelligence community has disputed an assessment by its Israeli counterpart and the Pentagon regarding Iran's nuclear program.

In an assessment that played down warnings by U.S. military chiefs, the American intelligence community determined that Iran has failed to produce highly-enriched uranium, required for the assembly of nuclear weapons. Two leading U.S. intelligence officials said Iran was not known to have begun refining low-enriched uranium into fuel that could be installed into a missile warhead.

Officials said the U.S. intelligence community and military dispute Iran's progress toward nuclear weapons. On March 1, Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Teheran has accumulated enough fissile material to produce a nuclear bomb.

Within hours, senior officials in the Obama administration, including Defense Secretary Robert Gates, disagreed with Mullen. Later, the admiral issued a clarification.

"There are differences among the [U.S.] intelligence communities," Blair said. "Our current estimate is that the minimum time at which Iran could technically produce the amount of highly-enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon is 2010."