Singapore – Stronger penalties are needed against Iran “not next year or the year after, but right now” because of the uncertainty over how soon Tehran may acquire a nuclear weapon, President Bush’s defense secretary said Saturday.
Pentagon chief Robert Gates did not rule out military action to stop Iran’s program, though he said it was an unattractive option.
“Probably everybody in this room wants there to be a diplomatic solution to this problem,” he told an international audience of military officers, government officials and private security experts.
Asked about U.S. intelligence estimates of Iran’s progress toward getting nuclear arms, Gates said, “Having to take care of this problem militarily is in no one’s interest.”
Yet uncertainty about Tehran’s nuclear work, he said, “does put a premium on unanimity in the international community – especially in the U.N. Security Council – in terms of ratcheting up the pressure on the Iranians, not next year or the year after but right now.”
The council has ordered two rounds of penalties over Iran’s nuclear program.
On Friday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the U.S. was not preparing for war against Iran. But Vice President Dick Cheney last month stood on the deck of an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf and warned Tehran that Washington would prevent the Islamic republic from dominating the Mideast.
Gates said the “general view” among U.S. intelligence analysts is that Iran could develop a nuclear device “probably sometime in the period 2010-2011 or 2014 or 15. … The reality is that because of the way Iran has conducted its affairs, we really don’t know,” making it even more urgent to strengthen economic penalties in hopes of forcing Iran to change course, Gates said.
Iran insists its nuclear program is intended to develop nuclear power as an energy source. The Bush administration rejects that explanation.
The dispute is complicated by other sources of tension between Washington and Tehran, including Bush’s assertion that Iran is supplying arms to insurgents in neighboring Iraq.
