One of the most senior US officials, National Security
Adviser Condoleezza Rice, said Sunday that the United States
and its allies "cannot allow the Iranians to develop a
nuclear weapon" and warned that President Bush would "look at
all the tools that are available to him" to stop Iran's
program.
Analysts in Israel and elsewhere had expressed concern that
the US would not be able to move forcefully against Iran
because of its difficulties in Iraq. Iran is a much stronger
adversary than Iraq was, and its government is much less
corrupt although it is not clear how much popular support it
has.
Rice said that she expected that the International Atomic
Energy Agency will force Iran to choose between isolation or
the abandonment of its nuclear weapons efforts sometime in
the next two months. But she did not say whether the United
States would be able to impose sanctions against Iran in the
United Nations Security Council as it had against Iraq. Iran
is not considered an international outcast, as Saddam Hussein
became after he invaded Kuwait in 1991.
Until now, European powers and Russia have resisted American
efforts to impose sanctions against Iran, which they see as a
major trading partner.
Iran has insisted that its nuclear effort is entirely for the
peaceful production of electric power, though the
International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations'
nuclear monitoring agency, has found evidence of covert
efforts, stretching back more than 18 years, to produce
highly enriched uranium suitable primarily for weapons
production.
A week ago Iran's foreign minister, Kamal Kharrazi, said his
country would resume producing parts for centrifuges, the
equipment needed to enrich uranium, because European nations
had not brought the Atomic Energy Agency's investigations to
a close.
Ms. Rice was responding to an article in The New York
Times that said that the Bush administration's diplomatic
efforts during the past 20 months to stop the progress of
nuclear weapons programs in Iran and North Korea had so far
failed.
Ms. Rice countered that there had been "diplomatic successes"
in organizing North Korea's neighbors to confront the problem
and spurring action against Iran at the Vienna-based Atomic
Energy Agency.
"It was, in fact, the president who really put this on the
agenda in his State of the Union address, the famous `axis of
evil' address," Ms. Rice said. "And our allies have really
begun to respond."
Various pundits have suggested that Israel may take action
against Iranian nuclear efforts since Israel has long
insisted on the seriousness of the Iranian threat to its very
existence. Iran has made several statements against this
possibility, saying that it is able to retaliate for any
aggressive action against it. Israel has not said anything
publicly about taking unilateral action against Iran.
Rice declined to say whether the United States would support
action by Israel to attack Iran's facilities the way it
attacked the Osirak reactor in Iraq in 1981.
"I think that I don't want to get into hypotheticals on
this," Ms. Rice said. "I do think that there are very active
efforts under way, for instance, to undermine the ability of
the Iranians under the cover of civilian nuclear cooperation
to get the components that would help them for nuclear
weapons developments."
She said Russia had declared that it would provide help to
Iran only if it returned all its nuclear fuel to Russia so it
could not be diverted for weapons. "I think you cannot allow
the Iranians to develop a nuclear weapon," she said. "The
international community has got to find a way to come
together and to make certain that that does not happen."
Before the war in Iraq last year, Ms. Rice and other senior
US officials had said that history had vindicated the Israeli
raid on Osirak. Had that attack not crippled Iraq's main
nuclear reactor, they said, Saddam Hussein might have had
nuclear weapons before the Persian Gulf war in 1991.
There are important differences between the Iraqi nuclear
installation and the situation in Iran. All of Iraq's efforts
were concentrated at that one location, and its destruction
effectively halted all Iraqi progress in nuclear research for
many years. Iran's nuclear sites are much farther away from
Israel and are dispersed and hidden within populated
areas.
The words of the US National Security Adviser are
encouraging, but only time will tell if they will be followed
up with action.
