7.29.2005

Press Briefing by Scott McClellan: "Q Scott, an article in the American Conservative by Philip Giraldi, former intelligence operative, indicated the Vice President has revamped strategy towards Iran where there are now 300 to 400 missiles targeted various sites in Iran, including tactical nuclear missiles, especially aimed at the Iranian nuclear capabilities. These are now, according to Giraldi, also under command of the theater commander.

Given our problems with Iran and the fact that now that they have decided to go for the full cycle of their peaceful nuclear program, might we be anxious that if there were a terrorist incident here in the United States in any way connected to Iran, that there might be a knee-jerk reaction of utilizing this hair-trigger against the Iranians?

MR. McCLELLAN: One, I appreciate your question. I'm not going to get into accepting anything that you alleged in your comments. I'm not going to get into discussing matters relating to national security of that nature.

Two, in terms of Iran, Iran made some commitments to suspend their uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities. We expect them to abide by that commitment. If they were to begin those activities again, they would be violating the commitment they made under the Paris agreement with the Europeans. And we have made it very clear that Iran has a history of hiding their nuclear activities from the international community. That's why it's so important that you have some confidence-building measures, or objective guarantees in place, so that they show the international community that their nuclear program is not being used to develop weapons, or that they're not developing weapons under the cover of a civilian program.

And if Iran is going to violate their agreements, then we would, obviously, be looking at discussing with the Europeans, who have also committed to doing so, looking at going to the Security Council.

Go ahead."

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home