Source: CNN'S Amanpour

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN ANCHOR: Tonight, the world is trying to assess the nuclear signals coming from Tehran, as Iran lashes back against a rebuke from the U.N., this as a major decision looms on another powder keg, Afghanistan.

Good evening, everyone. I'm Christiane Amanpour, and welcome to the program.

We begin with rising tension in one of the world's most turbulent regions. U.S. President Obama is now set to unveil his new strategy on Afghanistan. He spent months considering this move, which he'll announce Tuesday at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. It's been a long time coming, so long that the British defense minister has said that the hiatus is harming efforts to make progress against the Taliban.

Just this weekend, the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, ruled out any talks with the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, calling his administration, quote, "a stooge of the West."

But first, is Iran raising the stakes of international diplomacy? President Ahmadinejad on Sunday announced ten new uranium enrichment plants to be built, this after the outgoing head of the IAEA, Mohamed ElBaradei, has said that talks with Tehran have hit a dead end.

To talk about the ramifications of all these moves from Tehran, we're joined by Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace. 

Mr. Sadjadpour, thanks so much for joining us from Washington.

KARIM SADJADPOUR, CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT FOR INTERNATIONAL PEACE: Thank you.

AMANPOUR: How do you assess what President Ahmadinejad and the cabinet has said over the weekend?

SADJADPOUR: Christiane, I think Ahmadinejad's announcement was mostly bluster. If we want to put this into some perspective, Iran has taken over two decades to complete its enrichment facility in Natanz, and it's still not fully operational. So for them to complete ten enrichment facilities the size of Natanz would -- would take decades.

So I would take this announcement with a grain of salt. I certainly don't think it's an imminent threat. And to credit the Obama administration, I think the United States under his leadership has projected kind of the poise and dignity of a superpower, instead of reacting to every announcement which Iran makes.

AMANPOUR: Well, as you know -- and we're going to bring up a quote from the speaker of the Iranian parliament -- as you know, the administration is also planning on sanctions and trying to get the world mobilized if this nuclear deal doesn't go through. And what we have is Mr. Larijani saying that, "We will carefully watch your future actions. And if you do not cease your ridiculous policy of carrots and sticks, we will follow a new path of behavior towards you."

So what really does the U.S. have and the world powers in terms of leverage now?

SADJADPOUR: Well -- well, I would say, Christiane, firstly, with regards to Ali Larijani's comments, this has long been the modus operandi of the Iranian regime. They want to show that pressure is not going to moderate their behavior. So when they're under pressure, rather than compromising, which they believe will project weakness and invite even more pressure, they often respond provocatively.

And I would say that two things have changed profoundly over the course of the last year. One is, is that the Obama administration has really made a good-faith effort at diplomacy. So when you would talk to European diplomats or Russian or Chinese diplomats, say, last year under the Bush administration, they were reluctant to escalate. They were reluctant to adopt sanctions and punitive measures because they would argue that the Bush administration really hadn't made a good-faith effort at diplomacy. And I think now they no longer have that same pretext, because they've noted that the Obama administration has reached out.

AMANPOUR: But where are we right now? Because there was this moment a few weeks ago in Vienna where this whole deal on low-enriched uranium, shipping Iran's -- the majority of Iran's stockpile out, having it highly processed, and bringing it back for Iran's use in a medical reaction, and suddenly it sort of collapsed. It looked like Iran was accepting it at first. Why do you think it's back to the drawing board?

SADJADPOUR: I think, Christiane, part of the problem is that what transpired with the June 12th elections in Iran was that any remaining moderates or pragmatists that were part of the Iranian government's decision-making structure have essentially been purged from the system. And now you have the hard-line supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, who has essentially surrounded himself by similar hard-liners who believe that enmity towards the United States was a fundamental pillar of the 1979 revolution and it remains essential to the identity of the Islamic republic.

So whenever they're in negotiations or they're under pressure, their default instinct is -- is usually defiance.

AMANPOUR: So what is the next step, then? Because, obviously, President Obama and his administration are saying that they still hold out potential hope for diplomacy to work. But they're also putting a deadline that seems to be the end of this year. Where does this go? Is there any realistic chance of diplomacy with Iran now?

SADJADPOUR: Christiane, I think it's going to be a multifaceted policy. We're going to continue to dialogue with Iran. That door of engagement, I think, will remain open. But the Obama administration will no longer have the luxury of patience, and I think they will be forced to escalate and adopt certain sanctions and punitive measures that they were reluctant to take in the past.

As you mentioned in the lead-up to the broadcast, the Obama administration is desperately trying to stabilize the situations in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the last thing they want to do is escalate toward Iran, which shares borders with both Afghanistan and Iraq.

AMANPOUR: So what happens, though? Because, obviously, Iranian officials are also saying that the posture of threats and pressure in the past simply hasn't worked and it leads to negative response from Iran. We've seen that over this weekend. But what is the next step? Because, obviously, in the back of everybody's mind is -- is Israel, is somebody else going to take matters into their own hands militarily?

SADJADPOUR: I -- when you talk to U.S. officials about the prospect of an Israeli strike, they say it's not an idle threat. It's something that they're certainly concerned about and may take the sentiments of Prime Minister Netanyahu at face value when he says that Iran represents, quote, unquote, "an existential threat."

My argument is that an Israeli strike against Iran would actually be welcomed by the hardliners in Tehran, because it would be perhaps the only thing that would heal internal political rifts and really silence the opposition.

So I think that the Obama administration certainly wants to continue forward diplomacy. And, again, what I would argue is that they're in a much better place than the Bush administration, in the sense that the bulk of the international community now realizes that Iran is kind of the intransigent actor in this equation, not Washington, which was the conventional wisdom during the Bush administration. And Iran is a government which is not only under tremendous international pressure, but there's tremendous domestic pressure in Iran.

So I think that the Iranian government is in a far less advantageous position than they were, say, one year ago.

AMANPOUR: Karim Sadjadpour, thank you so much. And we'll continue to watch this developing situation.

And to keep up...

SADJADPOUR: Thank you, Christiane.