WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice escalated the Bush administration’s anti-Iran rhetoric Tuesday, accusing its government of pursuing nuclear weapons and calling any dialogue with its leaders pointless until they suspend the country’s enrichment of uranium.
While Rice’s message was familiar, the tone of her speech, before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, was unusually sharp, taking oblique aim at Sen. Barack Obama and other Democratic leaders who have called for the United States to engage Iran diplomatically.
“We would be willing to meet with them but not while they continue to inch toward nuclear weapons under the cover of talks,” she told the group, a pro-Israel lobby known by its acronym, AIPAC. “The real question isn’t why won’t the Bush administration talk to Iran. The real question is why won’t Iran talk to us.”
The issue of opening high- level diplomatic talks with Iran has come under the spotlight this political season, and that has played out at AIPAC’s 2008 policy conference here. On Monday, Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, allied himself firmly with the Bush administration and charged that Obama’s calls for diplomacy with Iran were misguided and insufficient.
Obama will have the opportunity to defend his position today, when he and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton are scheduled to address the group.
