Tehran, Iran ? The government of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sought Tuesday to gain a diplomatic edge abroad and a political windfall at home after the release of a U.S. intelligence estimate concluding Iran had halted a secret nuclear weapons program four years ago.

Iranian officials openly gloated Tuesday, demanding the U.S. apologize for accusing them of pursuing weapons of mass destruction.

“U.S. officials have so far inflicted (much) damage on the Iranian nation by spreading lies against the country and by disturbing public opinion. Therefore, they have to pay the price for their action,” government spokesman Gholam-Hossein Elham told reporters, according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency.

Iran’s hard-line government, already under sanctions for its pursuit of a uranium enrichment program that theoretically could lead to the development of a nuclear weapon, had drawn the ire of the international community in recent days after Iranian and European negotiators last week failed to make headway on the issue.

Even China, which has resisted U.S.-led efforts to further punish Iran, edged toward endorsing a third round of economic sanctions on Iran later this month. Moderates and reformists within Iran’s circle of power prepared to pounce ahead of parliamentary elections in March.

Analysts noted that the new U.S. estimate could leave Ah-madinejad better able to argue his case abroad, while telling his people at home that Iran can push forward with its enrichment program with less risk of a catastrophic war with the U.S.

“Although it is an internal issue in American politics, the report is well received here as it consolidates the Islamic republic of Iran’s nuclear stance,” said Abul-Fazel Amouee, 28, a staff writer at the hard-line daily newspaper Hezbollah and commentator for Diplomatic Hamshahri, a magazine.

Although signatories to the international Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty such as Iran may enrich uranium to power nuclear electricity plants, the 2003 discovery of hidden nuclear sites in Iran raised suspicions the Islamic Republic had been secretly pursuing a weapons program.

The U.S. estimate concluded that under the foreign policy team of former President Mohammad Khatami, a relative moderate, Iran suspended its nuclear enrichment program that year to bolster ongoing negotiations with Europeans.

Since Ahmadinejad took office in 2005, his government has ratcheted up Iran’s rhetoric and resumed enrichment of uranium. Iranian military leaders regularly issued declarations about their nation’s military prowess and potential responses to any U.S. or Israeli attack on its nuclear facilities, often in response to American and Israeli threats to attack if Iran becomes close to acquiring a nuclear bomb.

For its part, the U.S. often raised its rhetoric in part to try to drive a wedge between Ahmadinejad’s circle and those of reformists and relative moderates as former President Hashemi Rafsanjani. Now Ahmadinejad is likely to argue that his hard-line approach paid off, dividing instead Iran’s critics in the international community while improving the nation’s standing in the region.

Despite the report’s more nuanced conclusions about Iran’s nuclear program, which noted that Iran could still enrich enough uranium to create a bomb between 2009 and 2015, observers sympathetic to Iran argued that it exonerated Iran and would turn the diplomatic momentum against the U.S.