UNITED NATIONS – A vote in Vienna today by the 35 members of the world’s nuclear watchdog, meeting in an emergency session, will set the stage for the International Atomic Energy Agency to report Iran’s transgressions to the U.N. Security Council, where sanctions could eventually be imposed.

Diplomats expect sanctions or other action against Iran to be deferred until the end of February, when the American ambassador at the United Nations, John Bolton, will have concluded a rotation as the president of the Security Council. The IAEA’s director, Mohamed ElBaradei, is to prepare a comprehensive report to be given to the Security Council after the regular board meeting of the IAEA in March. Even then, Iran’s oil might make it unpalatable even for Europeans to take serious action against the mullahs.

A fresh IAEA report, seemingly linking Iran directly to nuclear weapons, supplied new ammunition for America. “It’s been the position of the United States for over three years now that Iran’s nuclear weapons program amounts to a threat to international peace and security,” Mr. Bolton told reporters yesterday.

In his State of the Union address Tuesday night, President Bush criticized Iran for sponsoring terrorism and for repressing its own people, and said, “The Iranian government is defying the world with its nuclear ambitions, and the nations of the world must not permit the Iranian regime to gain nuclear weapons.”

But diplomats at Turtle Bay, where the Iranian issue is expected to land as early as tomorrow, expressed doubts yesterday that the 15-member Security Council could unite to impose sanctions. Sanctions are opposed for now by Russia and China, which, as two of the five permanent members of Security Council, wield vetoes.

“Who is imposing sanctions on whom, the international community on Iran, or Iran on the international community?” Russia’s U.N. ambassador, Andrey Denisov, told reporters yesterday. “Iran is one of the major suppliers of oil and gas, so it will be a very strong blow on international energy.”

Iran is the world’s fourth largest exporter of petroleum, and some Europeans are concerned that imposing sanctions – such as barring officials from world travel, freezing bank accounts and other assets, and closing the doors of international events, including international soccer tournaments – could backfire once Iran decides to retaliate.

Fears of a spike in oil prices as a result of such retaliation might make European countries, as well as such IAEA board members as India, which has extensive commercial ties with Iran, think twice about serious pressure on the mullahs. Political and business lobbying is expected to mount as sanctions seem more realistic, diplomats say.

“Oil companies have already made demarches to European capitals” to reconsider sanctions, the Greek U.N. ambassador, Adamantios Vassilakis, who is a member of the Security Council, told The New York Sun yesterday.

In Iran, President Ahmadinejad ratcheted up the rhetoric. “I am telling those fake superpowers that the Iranian nation became independent 27 years ago,” he told crowds yesterday in the town of Bushehr, where Russia and Iran are cooperating on a nuclear power plant. He said that “on the nuclear case,” Iran “will resist until fully achieving its rights.”

President Bush told Reuters yesterday while traveling to Nashville, Tennessee, that Mr. Ahmadinejad is “a person that, one, tries to rewrite the history of the Holocaust, and two, has made it clear that his intentions are to destroy Israel.” Israel, he added “is a solid ally,” and “we will rise to Israel’s defense if need be.” He added that there was a “very good chance” that the IAEA board would refer Iran to the council.

A report by Mr. El Baradei’s deputy, Olli Heinonen, which was read in parts to the Sun, linked Iran for the first time to a “military nuclear dimension.” It found that Iran has tested with “high explosives and the design of a missile reentry vehicle.” Combining potentially bomb-capable material with delivery systems that can carry atomic devices seems to contradict Iranian contention that its nuclear program is designed for peaceful uses in the energy sector.

According to Israeli intelligence sources, Iran has significantly increased the range of its Shahab missiles recently, and they can now reach most of Europe, as well as parts of Russia and China.

In a draft of an American-European sponsored resolution that will be considered in Vienna today, the IAEA demands several steps Iran will be required to take, including full cooperation with inspections, freezing uranium enrichment, and ratifying the nonproliferation treaty’s “Additional Protocol,” which allows for more intrusive inspections and a return to negotiations. Next month the agency will “report to the Security Council” whether Iran has fulfilled the demands, the proposed resolution says.

In past IAEA resolutions that referred Libya and North Korea to the council, the agency was required to “report noncompliance” by those countries. The current language, according to a diplomat in Vienna who asked for anonymity, is meant to be more “palatable” for Russia and China. Nevertheless, since Iran has already been cited by the IAEA board for noncompliance, the current language does not compromise the resolution by much, the diplomat said.

China, Russia, America, Britain, France, and Germany yesterday resolved to support the proposed IAEA resolution. The Security Council should “await” Mr. ElBaradei’s March report, the resolution said, “before deciding to take action to reinforce the authority of the IAEA process.”

In Europe, meanwhile, there are those who already begin to lobby against confronting Iran, making the same arguments they used in the debate on the eve of the 2003 Iraq war. “The West is painting itself into a corner,” former Iraq weapons inspector Hans Blix told Radio Free Europe. “They have said that Iran should refrain from all enrichment while they are negotiating, and now they cannot negotiate with them because Iran has resumed it.” Instead, the retired Swedish diplomat added, more concessions should have been offered to Iran, “about the same kind of things that North Korea has been offered.”