Posted on 01/13/2006 5:21:32 PM PST by SandRat
WASHINGTON, Jan. 13, 2006 – Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have denounced the Iranian government's resumption of uranium enrichment research and urged that the matter be referred to the U. N. Security Council for more intense and effective diplomatic actions. The Iranian government "appears to be on the path to develop nuclear weapons," Cheney said on the nationally syndicated Tony Snow radio program Jan. 11. "This is an increasingly significant problem that the world is going to have to address."
Speaking at a Washington news briefing yesterday, Rice agreed. The U.N. Security Council, she said, "should call for the Iranian regime to step away from its nuclear weapons ambitions. The United States will encourage the Security Council to achieve this end."
Rice emphasized that the United States is working toward a diplomatic solution. "We continue to encourage a peaceful, diplomatic solution to this issue," she said, "which spares the world from the threat posed by a nuclear-armed Iran, and which benefits the Iranian people with the possibility of renewed relations and integration with the international community."
The Iranian government had permitted the International Atomic Energy Agency to oversee and to inspect its nuclear program since 2003. But earlier this week the Iranian government broke the agency's seals on a nuclear plant in Natanz so it could resume uranium enrichment research.
Enriched uranium can be used to produce nuclear weapons. But Iran's president, Mahomoud Ahmadinejad, has disavowed this intent. The Iranian government, he has said, is interested only in developing nuclear power for peaceful, civilian purposes. Nuclear power, for example, can be used to generate electricity.
Cheney dismissed Mahomoud's claim. The Iranian government, he observed, has been offered, and it has rejected, "a guaranteed source of fuel that would be enriched only to the level necessary to run a civilian reactor."
Indeed, the Russian government had offered to secure Iran's spent fuel so that it couldn't be reprocessed for nuclear weapons-grade plutonium. This would have allowed Iran to enjoy nuclear energy, but not nuclear weapons. However, Cheney said, the Iranian government rejected this offer.
"What they want," he said, "is the ability to enrich the uranium themselves; and that would allow them to take it up to a much higher level and purity that is required for nuclear weapons."
This is disconcerting, Cheney noted, because the Iranian government "has been one of the prime terror-sponsoring states in the world (and) a prime mover behind Hezbollah," a Shiia Islamist group the United States considers a terrorist organization. Given Iran's track record and some of the more outrageous statements the country's new president has made, Cheney said, "Ahmadinejad doesn't inspire confidence ... in anyone."
Ahmadinejad has helped to seal the view that Iran is a very dangerous power, Rice said. "And since nobody trusts Iran's protestations that this would be a peaceful program," she added, "people are duly alarmed."
The Bush administration has been trying to resolve this growing problem through diplomacy, in coordination with its British, French and German allies in the European Union.
Cheney said these efforts so far have been unsuccessful, but Rice cautioned that this is "not the end of diplomacy."
"We now enter a new phase in diplomacy," she said. "I don't think it serves anybody's interests to have a nuclear-armed Iran."
That new phase, Rice said, involves a European Union request for an emergency meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency's board of governors. At that meeting, the IAEA would "report Iran's noncompliance with its ... obligations to the U.N. Security Council," Rice explained.
The secretary declined to discuss specific actions that the Security Council could or would take. "There are a variety of options, a variety of tools at the disposal of the international community," she said.
But Iranian government officials continue to be defiant. According to the Iranian state-run media, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said this week that if the U.N. Security Council takes up Iran's nuclear program, his country will cease cooperating with the IAEA.
Iran's "right to develop and to access nuclear technology must not be limited by any outside country," he is quoted as saying.
Rice expressed hope that the Iranian government would be more cooperative once it realizes that its defiance has brought down upon it the universal reproach by the international community.
"I would hope that seeing the very powerful reaction of the international community, Iran would now take a step back and look at the isolation that it is about to experience," she said. "The Iranian people, frankly, deserve better."
Turning up the pressure on the Klansman in a Khafka.
Things are heating up very rapidly. Frankly, I think Iran already has nukes, and that is why they are so confident in their challenges to the UN.
Initially, I thought they were doing an Iraq replay and stalling for time, but I think this is a whole different ballgame, because they have already seen where that got Iraq. Iran wouldn't be doing this unless they already had the capacity, or at least most of it, and were cocked and pretty much ready to fire.
My pessimistic view, at least.
Speaking at a Washington news briefing yesterday, Rice agreed. The U.N. Security Council, she said, "should call for the Iranian regime to step away from its nuclear weapons ambitions.
"Step away from the ambition.....do you feel lucky punk?
Now I know your are thinking do they have 3000 or 4000
nuclear weapons? Well in all the excitement I kinda lost
track myself, so you got to ask yourself, do you feel lucky, well do you PUNK!"
The Security Council is really going to make them quake in their boots. /sarcasm
Neither Russia or China is on our side here.
Better now than in five more years.
True. I think they have the technology and are probably ready to go, but they're certainly not as good as they'll be in five years (or even one).
They think there's going to be a long stall because they saw what happened with Iraq, where the UN enabled Saddam to get most of his weapons and even key personnel to other countries. I don't think Iran will do this; they'll use the grace period to perfect their long range missles.
BTW, anybody see the article in today's WSJ on Chavez (Venezuela) and Iran? Iran is sending advisors and exporting "technology" to VZ. What kind of technology?
Iran already has a ton of petro specialists there. Maybe the technology is for coffee roasting?
Oh, great. Another protracted kabuki dance, like the one that preceded Iraq. We sure got a lot for our trouble out of that one.
This one won't be any different. If we aren't willing to pull the damned trigger, we ought to sit this out. And if we are willing to pull the trigger, pull the damned thing and quit yakking.
BTTT
Kuwait News Agency:
http://www.kuna.net.kw/home/Story.aspx?Language=en&DSNO=806611
"'... On Iran, we have been very clear that we believe that the time has come for a referral of Iran to the (UN) Security Council,' Rice said in response to a question. 'The Iranians have been given every opportunity to find a way to a solution, a negotiated solution that would give the international community confidence that Iran does not seek a nuclear weapon. And they have not taken those opportunities.'"
Rice: Force against Iran not option at this point
reuteurs | Jan 12, 2006 | na
Posted on 01/12/2006 7:44:01 PM PST by Flavius
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1557145/posts
The Chinese Army Spy and Condoleezza Rice
Newsmax | 2001 | Charles R. Smith
Posted on 01/10/2006 7:13:49 PM PST by Jan Malina
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1555753/posts
The Iranian mullahcracy is aware that they're next, which is why they've been supporting the terrorist a-holes operating in Iraq, as a delaying tactic. The Syrians and Iranians just had a diplomatic summit, but it is about the further planning for their next move. I'm about the only person nutty enough to think that there's a war in the works, another attack on Israel by its not too neighborly neighbors; my guess is, the disengagement politicians in Israel are making that same guess, and want to reduce exposure of troops by reduçing the extent of territory and bases which need to be manned.
The Syrians have the missiles and the proximity; the Iranian role is to build the nukes; the Egyptian and Saudi roles will be to launch the massive ground assault. The Saudis in particular won't have to worry about armaments -- a few years back there were already more weapons than could be used by every man, woman, and child in the Kingdom.
US insistence on open elections in Egypt may have been an effort to reduce radicalization of the population there, but what it will do instead is minimize the risk of an overthrow of the Mubarek regime while most of Egypt's armed forces are on the front.
Just my nutty ideas here, and it had been a while since I iterated them. ;')
I think you may be more right that you think. I've been wondering similar things for the past few months myself. It's like 1914 all over again, there is a building tension awaitng a spark. I pray daily for Israel and her people, as I do not want them to suffer another war. But if they end up having to fight, I hope and pray they kick tush to the moon and take names later - once and for all defeat their enemies so decisively that the heathens will leave them alone for many years.
Hillary talks Iran strike
Newsday | January 18, 2006 | GLENN THRUSH
Posted on 01/19/2006 2:53:35 PM PST by neverdem
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1561217/posts
(Stop) Hillary Clinton for President in 2008
'Civ | February 29, 2005 (a little joke) | 'Civ
Posted on 02/28/2005 9:31:31 AM PST by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1352749/posts
Syria Backs Nuclear Iran
The Telegraph (UK) | 1-20-2006 | Patrick Bishop
Posted on 01/19/2006 6:23:57 PM PST by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1561311/posts
In the next war, Israel will need everything it took in 1948, 1967, and 1973 just to survive. After that conflagration is done, Israel needs to finish the job and kick out all Moslems, bulldoze their tenements, and annex everything. Israel won't do that, of course...
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