PHUKET, Thailand - Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Wednesday that the United States would consider extending a "defense umbrella" over the states in the Persian Gulf region if Iran does not bow to international demands to halt its nuclear program.

Her comment, delivered at a freewheeling town hall meeting in Bangkok, was both a warning to the Iranian government and a glimpse of how the Obama administration might cope with a nuclear-armed Iran, should Tehran continue with what Washington says is a sustained effort to acquire nuclear weapons. Iran insists that its nuclear program is for civilian purposes only.

Mrs. Clinton later said that she was not articulating a new American policy toward Iran, merely demonstrating that Iran's pursuit of a nuclear weapon would not give it the safety and security it believes it would.

A defense umbrella in the Persian Gulf would move the United States closer to the explicit security guarantee that Washington gives allies in Asia, though that is a nuclear umbrella - a term Mrs. Clinton did not use Wednesday. She did talk about fortifying the military ability of Iran's neighbors.

"We want Iran to calculate what I think is a fair assessment that if the U.S. extends a defense umbrella over the region, if we do even more to support the military capacity of those in the Gulf," she said, "it's unlikely that Iran will be any stronger or safer, because they won't be able to intimidate and dominate, as they apparently believe they can, once they have a nuclear weapon."

In public, the Obama administration has said little, if anything, about extending a defense umbrella over the Middle East, though Dennis B. Ross, a senior White House adviser on Iran and the Gulf region, endorsed the concept of a "nuclear umbrella" prior to joining the administration.

During the presidential election campaign, Mrs. Clinton called for a security umbrella over Israel and other Middle East nations. Mr. Obama, while not ruling out any options, has not said whether he would approve the use of nuclear weapons against Iran if it attacked its neighbors.

A senior administration official also said Mrs. Clinton's remarks did not reflect a shift in the administration's policy of preventing Iran from obtaining a weapon.

"She is making an argument to Iran about why they should not do this," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because only Mrs. Clinton was authorized to speak publicly on such issues. Mrs. Clinton is in Thailand for a meeting here of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or Asean.

Mrs. Clinton was also asked about reports that her visibility as secretary of state had waned in recent weeks. She made light of it, saying it was a misimpression left by the fact that she had broken her elbow and was forced to cancel two overseas trips, including one with Mr. Obama to Moscow.

"I'm not with the president on the trip and all of a sudden they go, 'Oh, where is she? She's gone, lost, disappeared,' " Mrs. Clinton said in mock horror, making light of news reports in the United States.

She also offered fresh details on Mr. Obama's political courtship of her in the days after the election to join his cabinet, saying she had first declined and given him names of people she thought would do a good job. Mrs. Clinton said the president, with repeated phone calls, wore down her resistance.

"He gave me an enormous amount of authority as secretary of state, and really everything I asked for so that could the job that he wanted me to do, that we agreed to," she said, "and I was running out of excuses." Earlier Wednesday, Mrs. Clinton intensified her warnings about reports of growing military cooperation between North Korea and Myanmar, citing the possible transfer of nuclear technology.

In remarks to reporters she said the United States was "very concerned about North Korea and recent reports" of possible nuclear deals with Myanmar. Military cooperation itself, she said, could destabilize the region.

Suspicions about North Korea's relationship with Myanmar, which the United States refers to as Burma, deepened recently when a North Korean freighter appeared to be steaming toward Myanmar. American officials, believing the ship might be carrying weapons or other illicit cargo, tracked it until it reversed course.





By Mark Landler, The New York Times, July 22, 2009