Will Iran Report Change U.S. Approach?

When asked about the administrations' response to these allegations, Reid told moderator Bob Schieffer, "It just reaffirms what they already thought, that Iran is moving in the direction of building a nuclear weapon."

Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment, also downplayed the significance of the United Nations inspectors' findings.

"I don't think this changes any of the fundamentals," Sadjadpour said. "I think that everyone, especially within Washington, already recognized that Iran was in pursuit of nuclear weapons capability."

According to Sadjadpour, the report's unusually strong language was more a reflection of the new leadership in the U.N. Nuclear Agency. "The previous general director, Mohammed ElBaradei, was fearful of the prospect of a U.S. or Israeli military strike against Iran so he tried to couch things in more peaceful terms."

Sadjadpour nonetheless warned that Iran can no longer be underestimated. "You have now a group of hardliners running the country who may well believe that they've ceded so much legitimacy in the aftermath of the elections that the only way to recoup that legitimacy is indeed by crossing that nuclear threshold."

Both panelists agreed that confirmation Iran has stepped up its uranium enrichment program will not impinge on the White House's strategy of pushing for international consensus on economic sanctions.

"Their focus right now is on getting China and Russia on board with these much broader, global efforts to impose sanctions on Iran," said Reid.

While diplomacy has thus far failed to change Chinese and Russian attitudes that are "instinctively opposed to sanctions," Sadjadpour told Schieffer, "The benefit of the engagement approach has been the fact that we've exposed Tehran as the intransigent actor in this equation, not the United States."

Ultimately, the most pressing issue facing the administration is timing.

"Ever since the first of the year, which was the deadline the White House posed for Iran to do something favorable or face new sanctions, we've been waiting for the question of when to be answered," Reid told Schieffer.

Watch the full show above. Also on Friday's Washington Unplugged -- Gail Gitcho, the woman behind Scott Brown's press operation, discusses the senator's unprecedented media attention; and Eamon Javers discusses his new book about former CIA and KGB agents moonlighting as corporate spies.

"Washington Unplugged" appears live on CBSNews.com each weekday at 12:30 p.m. ET. Click here to check out previous episodes.