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A review of Iran policy that Mr. Obama ordered after taking office is still under way, and aides say it is not clear how long he would be willing to allow Iran to continue its fuel production, and at what pace. But European officials said there was general agreement that Iran would not accept the kind of immediate shutdown of its facilities that the Bush administration had demanded.

Administration officials declined to discuss details of their confidential deliberations, but said that any new American policy would ultimately require Iran to cease enrichment, as demanded by several United Nations Security Council resolutions.

If the United States and its allies allow Iran to continue enriching uranium for a number of months, or longer, the approach is bound to meet objections, from both conservatives in the United States and from the new Israeli government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

If Mr. Obama signed off on the new negotiating approach, the United States and its European allies would use new negotiating sessions with Iran to press for interim steps toward suspension of its nuclear activities, starting with allowing international inspectors into sites from which they have been barred for several years.

Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency, whose inspectors would be a critical part of the strategy, said in an interview in his office in Vienna last week that the Obama administration had not consulted him on the details of a new strategy. But he was blistering about the approach that the Bush administration had taken. “It was a ridiculous approach,” he insisted. “They thought that if you threatened enough and pounded the table and sent Cheney off to act like Darth Vader the Iranians would just stop,” Dr. ElBaradei said, shaking his head. “If the goal was to make sure that Iran would not have the knowledge and the capability to manufacture nuclear fuel, we had a policy that was a total failure.”

Now, he contended, Mr. Obama has little choice but to accept the reality that Iran has “built 5,500 centrifuges,” nearly enough to make two weapons’ worth of uranium each year. “You have to design an approach that is sensitive to Iran’s pride,” said Dr. ElBaradei, who has long argued in favor of allowing Iran to continue with a small, face-saving capacity to enrich nuclear fuel, under strict inspection.

By contrast, in warning against a more flexible American approach, a senior Israeli with access to the intelligence on Iran said during a recent visit to Washington that Mr. Obama had only until the fall or the end of the year to “completely end” the production of uranium in Iran. The official made it clear that after that point, Israel might revive its efforts to take out the Natanz plant by force.

A year ago, Israeli officials secretly came to the Bush administration seeking the bunker-destroying bombs, refueling capability and overflight rights over Iraq that it would need to execute such an attack. President George W. Bush deflected the proposal. An Obama administration official said “they have not been back with that request,” but added that “we don’t think their threats are just huffing and puffing.”

Israeli officials and some American intelligence officials say they suspect that Iran has other hidden facilities that could be used to enrich uranium, a suspicion explored in a 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran. But while that classified estimate referred to 10 or 15 suspect sites, officials say no solid evidence has emerged of hidden activity.

Matthew Bunn, a nuclear expert at the Belfer Center at Harvard University, said in a interview on Monday that the Obama administration had some latitude in defining what constitutes “suspension” of nuclear work.One possibility, he said, was “what you call warm shutdown,” in which the centrifuges keep spinning, but not producing new enriched uranium, akin to leaving a car running, but in park. That would allow both sides to claim victory: the Iranians could claim they had resisted American efforts to shut down the program, while the Americans and Europeans could declare that they had halted the stockpiling of material that could be used to produce weapons.

The WSJ reported that the intruders had not sought to damage the power grid or any other key infrastructure so far, but suggested they could change their approach in the event of a crisis or war.

Security watchers said that, if true, the involvement of the Chinese and Russians in such a scenario would show they were strategically thinking about how either to constrain the US or to inflict more damage if they felt a need to do so.

"I think that China recognises if in a very strategic sense you want to ensure you have the ability to exploit another country's potential weakness or vulnerability, but do it in a way that isn't confrontational or cause an international crisis, then this is a very good way of doing that," Eric Rosenbach, of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government's Belfer Center, told Reuters news agency.

The motives behind these alleged attacks are undoubtedly military or political in nature, said Tim Mather, chief security strategist for the RSA Conference, the world's biggest security event.

In the coming weeks, a government review of cyber security is due to land on the desk of US President Barack Obama.