WASHINGTON (AFP) -- The United States wants to settle the Iran nuclear crisis through diplomacy, President George W. Bush said Monday describing reports of plans to attack Iran as "wild speculation".

"The doctrine of prevention is to work together to prevent the Iranians from having a nuclear weapon," Bush said at Johns Hopkins University in Washington.

"I know we hear in Washington 'prevention means force'," he added.

"In this case, it means diplomacy, by the way. I read the articles in the newspapers this weekend -- it was wild speculation," he said.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said however that Bush is not taking the military option off the table.

Bush said that the international community is "making pretty good progress" despite opposition from China and Russia to talk of sanctions against Iran.

The Washington Post newspaper and New Yorker magazine reported at the weekend about plans for possible military strikes.

"We've said multiple times that Iran is not Iraq," McClellan added.