World powers will bank on last week's revelation of a second uranium enrichment plant in Iran for leverage in pushing Iran for nuclear restraint and transparency in rare talks in Geneva set for Thursday, Reuters reported.
The disclosure of the plant tucked inside a hillside on an ex-missile base has hardened Western powers' resolve to extract Iranian concessions now or resort to biting sanctions fast, and softened Russia's outright opposition to harsher measures.
But Western charges of a cover-up to mask nuclear arms designs for the plant near the Shi'ite holy city of Qom, and Iran's defiant denials, rekindled a confrontational atmosphere that did not augur well for any hopes of convergence in Geneva.
And given Iran's enduring refusal to negotiate limits on its enrichment programme, which Western powers fear is inexorably approaching potential nuclear weapons capability, Geneva was shaping up as a chronicle of failure foretold.
"Things have changed since last week's announcement but we have to go through the motions since Iran has asked for this meeting," said a senior Western diplomat.
"The talks are pretty much doomed. It's clear Iran is not going to say what we want to hear and we're going to have to move to the next phase," he said, alluding to wider sanctions.
Washington has suggested severing gasoline imports to Iran, which would hit it hard since it lacks refining capacity. But that proposal faces resistance in Europe given concerns it would hurt ordinary Iranians and reunite them behind President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad despite his hotly disputed re-election in June.
More viable options may be sanctions on foreign investment in Iran's oil and gas and import-export sectors and tightening up the leaky current regime of asset freezes on Iranian firms and a ban on nuclear- and missile-related trade with Iran.
Iran says it is enriching uranium solely to fuel nuclear power plants. Enrichment technology can be calibrated to produce low-enriched uranium for electricity or high-grade fissile material for the core of atomic bombs.
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