UNITED NATIONS – European diplomats said yesterday that the international nuclear watchdog will convene for a special session in early February, and expressed their desire for the body to refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council, where punitive measures could be considered.

Russia and China, however, were cool to the prospect of isolating Tehran, a signal that agreement among council members may be difficult to achieve. As the Iranian mullahs escalated their confrontation with the West, yesterday banning CNN reporters from the country, some Iran watchers urged alternative measures to diplomacy, including deeper support for an internal overthrow of the mullah regime, as well as a possible use of military force.

Following a meeting among the five permanent members of the Security Council and Germany in London yesterday, a British Foreign Ministry spokesman said Europe requested a special meeting in Vienna of the 35-member board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency on February 2.

“Our position is the [Iranian] dossier should be referred to the Security Council,” the European Union’s top foreign policy official, Javier Solana, told reporters after meeting with Secretary-General Annan. “We are trying to convey to all the other members of the board of governors” that they should “construct a solid and wide coalition of countries that can show the Iranians that the route that they have taken now is not” constructive.

In Washington, Secretary of State Rice said, “We’ve got to finally demonstrate to Iran that it can’t with impunity just cast aside the just demands of the international community.” Referring Iran to the council, she added, should occur “as soon as possible.”

Mr. Solana said he is convinced the Iranian issue will be referred to the Security Council by the IAEA board. “The fact that it comes to the Security Council,” Mr. Solana told The New York Sun, “will give us more political support to whatever happens in Vienna.”

He is “confident” Russia and China would back the move, he said. Moscow was disappointed that Iran recently rejected the idea of enriching uranium on its behalf in Russia. But yesterday the Iranian ambassador in Moscow, Gholamreza Ansari, said the proposal is “constructive” and Tehran is “carefully studying it.”

Iran, meanwhile, announced that CNN would no longer be allowed to broadcast from the country. “Any revision in the decision depends on performance of Cable News Network in future,” the Iranian news agency, IRNA, reported on its Web site.

The trigger was what IRNA called a violation of “professional ethics.” CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, “who is of Iranian origin and knows Persian as a native Iranian, reported from Tehran that the Iranian president said Iran would proceed with production of nuclear weapons,” the agency wrote. “Ahmadinejad said the Iranian nation enjoys great civilization and long-standing culture, and they do not need nuclear weapons.”

Israel Radio’s director of Farsi broadcasting, Menashe Amir, said the CNN ban is part of a wider pattern of the Iranian president’s policy of intensifying the confrontation with the West to obscure the regime’s economic failures.

Specifically, Mr. Ahmadinejad recently countered Western allegations of Iranian human rights violations by sending a letter to Mr. Annan in which he alleged human rights violations by America and Europe. The regime also announced its intention to convene a meeting on Holocaust research “meant to put the West in a defensive mode, where it will have to prove that the atrocities were real,” Mr. Amir said. It also has escalated the confrontation on the nuclear front.

Such efforts have failed to convince the Iranian public, according to Mr. Amir, who regularly talks with Iranians on the airwaves. “In our call-in shows, they clearly say that the public is opposed to the regime and does not support its attempts to get atomic weapons,” Mr. Amir said. “When we ask why then there is no uprising, they say they lack leadership.”

Mr. Amir has urged American and European officials to increase their support for the Iranian opposition to encourage the overthrow of the regime. “America has invested billions to crush the Soviet regime, as it did in Iraq. A half-billion dollars could go a long ways to do the same in Iran,” he said.

In Moscow, as Iran again warmed to the Russian enrichment proposal, President Putin urged caution. “It’s necessary to work carefully and avoid any sharp, erroneous moves,” Mr. Putin said, according to the Associated Press.

China, which like Russia has extensive economic interests in Iran, has been hesitant about allowing a referral to the Security Council. “All relevant sides should remain restrained and stick to solving the Iranian nuclear issue through negotiations,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

But over the weekend, the IAEA director, Mohamed ElBaradei, said Iran needs to resolve suspicions about its nuclear program as soon as early March. “If I say that I am not able to confirm the peaceful nature of that program after three years of intensive work, well, that’s a conclusion that’s going to reverberate, I think, around the world,” he told Newsweek.

“Diplomacy is not just talking,” Mr. ElBaradei added. “Diplomacy has to be backed by pressure and, in extreme cases, by force.”