United States remains committed to diplomacy on Iran's nuclear ambitions
Iran-USA, Politics, 4/15/2005

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in an interview yesterday with the Wall Street Journal that she does not expect Iran to remain immune to the changes that are taking place in the Middle East, and threatened Iran with being referred to the U.N. Security Council over the nuclear differences in points of view.

She noted that the Iranians saw expatriate Afghans and Iraqis living in Iran participating in their own countries' democratic elections as out-of-country voters.Ê

"What does that say to Iranians who are stuck with unelected mullahs running their lives?" she asked.

She said that the rule of the unelected mullahs is in direct conflict with the aspirations of the Iranian people, whom she described as open, cultivated, educated and refined.

Rice said that the United States remains united with its partners in the European Union and with Russia in confronting Iran's nuclear ambitions.Ê She noted that that the EU-3 (Great Britain, France and Germany) have received a commitment from Iran to suspend its enrichment activities, and that Russia has taken measures to ensure that the civilian nuclear reactor it is building for Iran in Bushehr is not used for weapons development.

But she added that the diplomatic efforts must lead to a permanent solution, ensuring that Iran remains free of nuclear weapons and that the administration would be assessing the progress of these efforts over the next few months.Ê If diplomacy does not produce results, the matter would have to be referred to the U.N. Security Council, she said.

Rice said she believes Iran would be likely to pay attention to the U.N. Security Council because it is a state that depends on its good standing and trade links with the international community and cannot operate in total isolation.

She said that for both Iran and North Korea, "the acquisition of a nuclear weapon at the cost of complete isolation from the international system makes really no sense."

Worth noting that Iran said that it is not afraid of being referred to UN Security Council, and will face such a challenge if forced to.

Following is the U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE transcript of some of Rice's interview With The Wall Street Journal:

QUESTION:Ê Well, we just wanted to start with a question on Iran.Ê Obviously, when Sharon was at Crawford, and also evidently yesterday was pushing a sense of urgency out of Israel on terms of how far along Iran might be and wanting very much this to go the UN Security Council route perhaps faster than you would like it to go, I'm just curious how you -- what your sense is of that urgency and how much longer you're wanting to give the EU process.

SECRETARY RICE:Ê Well, I would say that the discussions we had with the Israelis was not unlike discussions that we've had before and this has all been taken into account as we thought about how to move the process forward.Ê So there wasn't a new revelation.

We obviously all think that there is -- that the Iranians ought to, sooner rather than later, try to instill confidence in the international system that they're going to live up to their obligations.Ê That's really the issue.

Now, the diplomacy that's underway has -- first of all, has them in suspension right now, which is important, but eventually has to come to some conclusion that is a -- that has the prospect of a permanent means by which to keep the Iranians from having the means to build a nuclear weapon.Ê This is really about the means.Ê I don't think that anybody is making a claim about the current capability of the Iranians.Ê The issue is really what means will they have to pursue a nuclear weapon under cover of civilian nuclear power development.

We still believe that the best course is one in which you can maintain unity among the various actors who are negotiating with the Iranians, and that includes not just the EU-3 but, for instance, the Russians, who have gone to some length to safeguard the Bushehr reactor.Ê That's something that I think was really not thinkable two or more years ago.

And so we think the diplomatic course that we're on is the right course, but obviously at some point in time the UN Security Council is an option, which is why we've worked very hard to unite everyone around the notion that that is, in fact, an option.

QUESTION:Ê The Europeans would argue that you could do containment by the EU-3 as long as there's a suspension on the activity (inaudible) that would be enough.Ê But the missile intelligence that you guys have gotten and developed that suggests that they appear to have a design for a warhead and perhaps have a parallel covert program, is time on our side if they do have a parallel covert program and what does the missile intelligence tell you about it?

SECRETARY RICE:Ê Well, you don't know what you don't know, unfortunately, and a covert program is, by its very nature, a program that is difficult to assess.Ê No one wants to see the Iranians have the capability to build a nuclear weapon under cover of civilian nuclear power, and I think that's what really we should stay focused on.

There's a reason that when the President talked at the National Defense University he talked about not having enrichment and reprocessing capability because that's really the loophole in the NPT.Ê So I think the issue is to make certain that those technological means are not available to states that have not proven themselves to be trustworthy in terms of their own international obligations, and I think that's what we really need to stay focused on.

QUESTION:Ê So are you saying that there isn't a parallel covert program or --

SECRETARY RICE:Ê I'm just saying that I don't have a way to judge the status of what we don't know.Ê That's the intelligence problem.

QUESTION:Ê And would you say if the status quo prevails by the fall, that that's enough time that the UN should start to deal with this?

SECRETARY RICE:Ê I don't want to put a timeline on it, but I think we probably want to make an assessment this summer and see where we are and see how far we've gone.Ê And, but I wouldn't put a timeline on it.

QUESTION:Ê Are we talking months or years?

SECRETARY RICE:Ê Well, again, I'm not going to put a timeline on it.Ê Let's see where we get with the diplomacy.Ê Let's see how -- whether or not it looks as if the Iranians are really serious about putting in place these -- the Europeans call them objective guarantees, which really means they can't have the technology to do this.Ê I think that's what we have to assess and then we can see where we are.

QUESTION:Ê Is there anything about the North Korean experience that makes one feel that Iran ought to be dealt with more urgently and is there any news from your trip to China on the North Korean -- because both of these countries, one's already got them and one's trying and --

SECRETARY RICE:Ê The North Koreans have been at this for a really long time.Ê I think most people believe this goes back to the late '60s in North Korea.Ê And there was never an ability to get a handle on it for a variety of reasons, including essentially a split international community.Ê There was a time when both the Soviets and the Chinese were helping in ways the North Korean program.Ê Advertently or inadvertently I won't try to judge, but they were certainly helping.

That is not the situation we face in Iran now, where I do think you have unity of purpose to try not to -- not just not to help the Iranians to get this capability, but to stop them from getting the capability.Ê So part of the lesson is that the international community just didn't get organized quickly enough in terms of North Korea because of splits during the Cold War and a whole variety of things.

The Iranians and the North Koreans are different in terms of their political orientation, too, in that I think the Iranians are probably more susceptible to the UN Security Council because this is not a state that I think can operate in total isolation, whereas the North Koreans have been quite capable of operating in total isolation.Ê So, in some sense, I think you have greater levers with the Iranians.

The North Koreans, though, are facing circumstances in which what they appear to want, which is to be brought into the international community for their own purposes, which has to do really with doing something about their economy, where I think that is being frustrated by their unwillingness to deal with the nuclear issue.Ê I did not -- I read only a Reuters report of the South Korean President when he was in Germany, but apparently saying that the nuclear issue is a hindrance to further economic development with the North.

Obviously, the normalization of relations that they had hoped for with Japan is not going to happen while there's a nuclear program on the table.Ê So the North Koreans have managed to get themselves into a box.

Now, I did have good discussions with the Chinese while I was there about the fact that the North Koreans can not be allowed just to continue to string the world along and that they can't be allowed to continue to make statements about their nuclear capability, just essentially denying their responsibility to be in the six-party talks and to work for a non-nuclear Korean Peninsula.Ê I think the Chinese took that on board and I suspect that they'll be involved in a series of diplomatic engagements with the North Koreans to see if they can move them.Ê But --

QUESTION:Ê You mean formal engagements again or --

SECRETARY RICE:Ê I think probably formal and informal.Ê But we don't have total transparency on how the North Koreans and Chinese deal with each other.

QUESTION:Ê But do you have any sense they've acted since you were there and --

SECRETARY RICE:Ê I have a sense that there have definitely been discussions.Ê I don't know how far they've gone.

QUESTION:Ê The time on this -- there's no containment issue here.

SECRETARY RICE:Ê No, there's no containment issue.

QUESTION:Ê I mean, we know they have -- we know they've got the rods, we know they have a capability to continue to produce.Ê So how long can you wait for them to be able to come back to the table?Ê When will the United States admit failure?

SECRETARY RICE:Ê Again, I don't think it's ever helpful to put a timeline on this, rather to try to judge the point at which you think that the diplomacy has run out of strength, and I think at that point you get signals from whether the other parties believe that they're getting anywhere with the North Koreans, whether the North Koreans are continuing to threaten.

I do think the North Koreans have been, frankly, a little bit disappointed that people are not jumping up and down and running around with their hair on fire because the North Koreans have been making these pronouncements.Ê This is partly about attention-getting, and when they do this, what they do is they deepen their own isolation.Ê They don't tend to get the international community reaction that they seem to want.Ê So some of this is also managing the North Koreans in that sense.

QUESTION:Ê Do you think this whole issue will be the biggest test of this administration?

SECRETARY RICE:Ê No, I don't.Ê I think the biggest test is the Middle East and the evolution of a stable and democratized Middle East, that that's really going to be the historical test.

QUESTION:Ê So you don't see either of these --

SECRETARY RICE:Ê I see --

QUESTION:Ê I mean, if something goes wrong that completely makes -- the Middle East issues as big as we all think they are, kind of a second tier issue?

SECRETARY RICE:Ê Something can always go wrong, but I would -- I don't think the North Koreans underestimate the deterrent capability of the United States.Ê I don't think the Iranians underestimate the deterrent capability of their region to mitigate against any gains that they might make, which is, in a sense, why for either the North Koreans or the Iranians the acquisition of a nuclear weapon at the cost of complete isolation from the international system makes really no sense.

And so yes, I think it's a critically important issue.Ê I think that the issue of, as the President said at one point, that something might fall in the hands of terrorists is something that we all are very concerned about.Ê It's why the Proliferation Security Initiative is important.Ê It's why stronger intelligence cooperation on this matter is important.Ê It's why breaking up the A.Q. Khan network was important because there you had a non-state actor who really had very little to lose by the transfer of these technologies.

So I don't mean to diminish the extraordinary importance of the issue, but if I look at what happened to the United States on September 11th and I look at what is likely to resolve* for us the prospect of being continually under a threat of terrorism for generations, I have to think that it's change in the basic nature of the Middle East that is really the historical challenge and opportunity.

Previous Stories:
  Khatami inspects uranium enrichment complex   (3/30/2005)
  Iran slams US double standard policy; US seeks to change nuclear treaty   (3/28/2005)
  Iran counteracts US threats to take Iran to the Security Council   (3/18/2005)
  Rafsanjani deplores US Intervention in countries affairs   (3/17/2005)

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