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Rice: World cannot accept nuclear armed Iran
Aug. 8, 2004 19:00 | Updated Aug. 8, 2004 23:18
Rice: World cannot accept nuclear armed Iran
By JPOST.COM STAFF
With Iran stepping up its nuclear program, a top White House aide said Sunday the world finally is "worried and suspicious" over the Iranians' intentions and is determined not to let Tehran produce a nuclear weapon.
National security adviser Condoleezza Rice also said the Bush administration sees a new international willingness to act against Iran's nuclear program. She credited the changed attitude to the Americans' insistence that Iran's effort put the world in peril.
She would not say whether the United States would act alone to end the program if the administration could not win international support.
Iran's foreign minister, Kamal Kharrazi, announced a week ago that his country had resumed building nuclear centrifuges. He said Iran was retaliating for the West's failure to force the UN nuclear watchdog agency to close its file on possible Iranian violations of nuclear nonproliferation rules.
Kharrazi said Iran was not resuming enrichment of uranium, which requires a centrifuge. But, he said, Iran had restarted manufacturing the device because Britain, Germany and France had not stopped the investigation by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
"The United States was the first to say that Iran was a threat in this way, to try and convince the international community that Iran was trying, under the cover of a civilian nuclear program, to actually bring about a nuclear weapons program," Rice said on CNN's Late Edition.
"I think we've finally now got the world community to a place, and the International Atomic Energy Agency to a place, that it is worried and suspicious of the Iranian activities," she said. "Iran is facing for the first time real resistance to trying to take these steps."
Bush, in his 2003 State of the Union address, included Iran with North Korea and Iraq in an "axis of evil" dedicated to developing nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction.
Since then, North Korea has publicly resumed its nuclear development program. In Iraq, invading US-led forces have found no such programs after President Saddam Hussein was deposed.
Iran announced in June that it would resume its centrifuge program. Afterward, the US official whose job is to slow the global atomic arms race, Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton, told Congress that Iran was jabbing "a thumb in the eye of the international community."
On NBC's Meet the Press, Rice reasserted that the world has fallen in line on Iran and said she expects next month to get a very strong statement from the IAEA "that Iran will either be isolated, or it will submit to the will of the international community."
She also said, "We cannot allow the Iranians to develop a nuclear weapon. The international community has got to find a way to come together and to make certain that that does not happen."
IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Moshe Ya'alon said in an interview with Channel two weeks ago that Israel shouldn't ignore the threat from Iran.
'In the past two weeks, Iran has broken the rules of the game regarding its monitoring of the International Atomic Energy Agency and resumed operating the [nuclear] project,' the IDF chief said.
We have to take seriously the Iranian efforts to get nuclear weapons. It has to worry not just Israel but all the free world,' Ya'alon said on Popolitica. 'This problem has been concerning us for the past 10 years.'
Iran earlier repeated its threat to 'wipe Israel off the map' if Israel attacks the Islamic republic's nuclear sites.
'The United States is showing off by threatening to use its wild dog, Israel,' Revolutionary Guards Commander Seyed Masood Jazayeri was quoted as saying by the Iranian student news agency, ISNA.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What is Mr. Kerry's position on this?
Aug. 8, 2004 19:00 | Updated Aug. 8, 2004 23:18
Rice: World cannot accept nuclear armed Iran
By JPOST.COM STAFF
With Iran stepping up its nuclear program, a top White House aide said Sunday the world finally is "worried and suspicious" over the Iranians' intentions and is determined not to let Tehran produce a nuclear weapon.
National security adviser Condoleezza Rice also said the Bush administration sees a new international willingness to act against Iran's nuclear program. She credited the changed attitude to the Americans' insistence that Iran's effort put the world in peril.
She would not say whether the United States would act alone to end the program if the administration could not win international support.
Iran's foreign minister, Kamal Kharrazi, announced a week ago that his country had resumed building nuclear centrifuges. He said Iran was retaliating for the West's failure to force the UN nuclear watchdog agency to close its file on possible Iranian violations of nuclear nonproliferation rules.
Kharrazi said Iran was not resuming enrichment of uranium, which requires a centrifuge. But, he said, Iran had restarted manufacturing the device because Britain, Germany and France had not stopped the investigation by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
"The United States was the first to say that Iran was a threat in this way, to try and convince the international community that Iran was trying, under the cover of a civilian nuclear program, to actually bring about a nuclear weapons program," Rice said on CNN's Late Edition.
"I think we've finally now got the world community to a place, and the International Atomic Energy Agency to a place, that it is worried and suspicious of the Iranian activities," she said. "Iran is facing for the first time real resistance to trying to take these steps."
Bush, in his 2003 State of the Union address, included Iran with North Korea and Iraq in an "axis of evil" dedicated to developing nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction.
Since then, North Korea has publicly resumed its nuclear development program. In Iraq, invading US-led forces have found no such programs after President Saddam Hussein was deposed.
Iran announced in June that it would resume its centrifuge program. Afterward, the US official whose job is to slow the global atomic arms race, Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton, told Congress that Iran was jabbing "a thumb in the eye of the international community."
On NBC's Meet the Press, Rice reasserted that the world has fallen in line on Iran and said she expects next month to get a very strong statement from the IAEA "that Iran will either be isolated, or it will submit to the will of the international community."
She also said, "We cannot allow the Iranians to develop a nuclear weapon. The international community has got to find a way to come together and to make certain that that does not happen."
IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Moshe Ya'alon said in an interview with Channel two weeks ago that Israel shouldn't ignore the threat from Iran.
'In the past two weeks, Iran has broken the rules of the game regarding its monitoring of the International Atomic Energy Agency and resumed operating the [nuclear] project,' the IDF chief said.
We have to take seriously the Iranian efforts to get nuclear weapons. It has to worry not just Israel but all the free world,' Ya'alon said on Popolitica. 'This problem has been concerning us for the past 10 years.'
Iran earlier repeated its threat to 'wipe Israel off the map' if Israel attacks the Islamic republic's nuclear sites.
'The United States is showing off by threatening to use its wild dog, Israel,' Revolutionary Guards Commander Seyed Masood Jazayeri was quoted as saying by the Iranian student news agency, ISNA.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What is Mr. Kerry's position on this?
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