2010 Complete Election Coverage: Obama's unplanned Iran news

Late Thursday night, two hours after it sent out President Barack Obama’s Friday schedule, the White House told reporters it was adding another event – a statement that he would give in the morning. Amid all the hoopla of the G-20 economic summit in Pittsburgh, there was scant indication the announcement would be dramatic.

But behind the scenes, the Obama administration was furiously preparing for a major public intelligence disclosure that it had not planned to make: that the U.S. had known for years about a previously undisclosed clandestine nuclear enrichment facility Iran has been building since 2005 in a mountain near Qom.

Interviews with administration and international officials, diplomats, non-proliferation and Iran experts suggest the administration had no plans to announce its suspicions before beginning international talks with Iran next week. But its hand was forced after learning some time during the week of a letter Iran had sent the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency in Vienna acknowledging construction of a previously undisclosed facility.

"We became aware, we were told by the IAEA that Iran had provided them with this letter," a senior administration official said at a briefing Friday. "I think that it's very clear that the Iranian letter to the IAEA is too little too late, given the history of the construction of this facility, given the obligations they have, both to the IAEA and to the U.N. Security Council."

IAEA officials told Obama aides about the letter Tuesday evening in New York, The New York Times reported Saturday. They met with Obama and James L. Jones, his national security adviser, on Wednesday to discuss strategy. According to The Times, European officials urged Obama to disclose the Iranian facility on Thursday morning, when he presided over the U.N. Security Council, but Obama and his aides decided to wait until Friday.

In the meantime, a hurried round of briefings took place in Europe, Washington and New York. On Wednesday, intelligence officials from the U.S., Britain and France briefed IAEA officials in Vienna on what they knew about the Qom facility. That same day, in New York, Obama briefed Russian president Dmitry Medvedev. Then on Thursdays, intelligence officials briefed congressional leadership in Washington, while Chinese president Hu Jintao was informed in New York.

Shortly before Obama's announcement Friday morning, the IAEA sent out a press statement confirming that it had received a letter from Iran. “I can confirm that on 21 September Iran informed the IAEA in a letter that a new pilot fuel enrichment plant is under construction in the country,” an IAEA spokesman said in a statement. 

At 8:30 am, Obama made the announcement, flanked by Britain’s Gordon Brown and France’s Nicolas Sarkozy in a show of international unity. As Obama spoke, the administration sent out background guidance to Congress and the press with more information on the Qom facility.

“We learned earlier this week that Iran has sent the IAEA a letter indicating that it is constructing an enrichment facility but providing no detailed information that would enable the IAEA to monitor the site,” that White House-provided guidance said. 

Why would the White House have preferred not to publicly disclose its Qom evidence, seemingly something of a smoking gun for the case that Iran hasn’t been transparent about even its current nuclear activities? Why was it only prompted to make the announcement after it learned of Iran’s letter to the IAEA?

“Because the Iranians are trying to get in front and create an argument that they didn't do anything wrong,” the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s George Perkovich told POLITICO. “So to try to block that, Obama had to get [it] out. We would have been better off not announcing and keeping it as leverage and a way to see if the Iranians kept their word in a future deal.”

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly said that the IAEA did not notify the United States or other member states of the letter it received from Iran.