The Obama administration’s top nuclear-weapons official yesterday expressed confidence that the United Nations Security Council will back tough sanctions against Iran over the country's nuclear facilities.

Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has said the facilities are part of an energy program, but U.S. intelligence officials maintain that the facilities are part of Iran’s longstanding goal of acquiring weapons of mass destruction.

“Of course, Iran is saying it won’t be influenced by sanctions or the threat of sanctions,” said Gary Samore, White House coordinator for arms control and weapons of mass destruction. “But I think that what they say in public and what they say in private are very different. And I think you see the Iranians making a very strong and concerted diplomatic effort to try to prevent the Security Council from acting. To me, that demonstrates that regardless of whatever they say in their press conferences, they’re trying very hard to head off a sanctions resolution, and I think they’ll fail.”

He said that these sanctions would be different in “character” than past sanctions, which have failed to prevent Iran from moving forward with its nuclear ambitions. He also said he believes both Russia and China will support the sanctions.

Samore added that Iran’s nuclear program has faced numerous glitches, which he attributed to the fact that the United States has worked to prevent it from acquiring technology from other countries. He declined to comment on whether the United States has sabotaged Iranian nuclear facilities.

If the country continues on its current path, Samore said, it could “start an arms race in the region, which, at the end of the day, is going to weaken Iran’s security.”

“We’ve been very effective in making it impossible for them to buy things abroad, and that’s made it very difficult for them to build machines that work,” Samore said.

On the topic of Israel, he said that although the United States continues to support a WMD-free zone in the Middle East, such a zone is out of the question until the area achieves a higher level of security and better diplomatic relations.

The administration hopes Israel one day will join the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, but until conditions in the region improve, Obama will not press Israel to open up about its nuclear program, Samore said.

Israel neither confirms nor denies that it has nuclear weapons, though the country is widely believed to have a stockpile.