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Bush Says Diplomacy With Iran Is Best
By ANNE GEARAN, AP Diplomatic Writer
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration on Wednesday reaffirmed its commitment to diplomacy as the best way to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon while Israel's leader ruled out a military strike to destroy Tehran's nuclear program.
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AP Photo
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Reuters
The White House also sought to play down differences with Israel over the urgency of the threat.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon contended Iran was years away from possessing a nuclear weapon, but only months short of overcoming "technical problems" in building one.
"Once they will solve it, that will be the point of no return," Sharon told CNN two days after his meeting with President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney at Bush's Texas ranch.
That is a darker assessment of Iran's capabilities than U.S. officials have offered publicly. In addition, White House press secretary Scott McClellan gave no indication Wednesday that Bush was swayed by a presentation at the ranch from Sharon and his chief military adviser, who brought Israeli intelligence documents on Iran's nuclear reactor program.
Iran insists its nuclear program is strictly designed to produce only electrical power.
The Israelis argued that Iran is nearing a "point of no return" in developing a weapon that could be used against its declared enemy Israel, U.S. and Israeli officials said after the meeting.
Sharon, asked in the television interview if he has ruled out a unilateral military strike against Iran, said: "We don't think that's what we have to do. ... It's not that we are planning any military attack on Iran." He said Israel did not need to take a leading role in attempts to deny nuclear weapons to Iran and called again for an international coalition to deal with the issue.
Sharon had pressed the president to threaten Tehran with penalties, an approach Bush favored until recently.
As part of Bush's second-term effort to repair ties with European allies, the White House agreed last month to support arms control negotiations that three European countries have begun with Iran. Those talks have not moved quickly, and Sharon argued that European negotiators may be softening their stance.
"We want to see this resolved through the diplomatic efforts of the Europeans. We want to see it resolved in a peaceful way," McClellan told reporters on Wednesday.
At the State Department, spokesman Richard Boucher noted that U.S. intelligence agencies, in assessing Iran's nuclear program, have used "an estimate that said that Iran was not likely to acquire a nuclear weapon before the beginning of the next decade. That remains the case."
He added, "We certainly understand Israel — other governments — are concerned about nuclear developments in Iran, and we talk to many governments about it."
The latest U.S. assessment on Iran's nuclear program was laid out in March by the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency.
"Unless constrained by a nuclear nonproliferation agreement, Tehran probably will have the ability to produce nuclear weapons early in the next decade," Vice Adm. Lowell Jacoby told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Jacoby told senators that Iran is probably "continuing nuclear weapon-related endeavors in an effort to become the dominant regional power and deter what it perceives as the potential for U.S. or Israeli attacks."
Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have said the United States has no intention of attacking Iran, but have refused to take the option entirely off the table.
Cheney has raised the possibility that Israel might make the first military move if it became convinced that Iran had significant nuclear capability. "Given the fact that Iran has a stated policy that their objective is the destruction of Israel, the Israelis might well decide to act first, and let the rest of the world worry about cleaning up the diplomatic mess afterward," Cheney said in a January interview with MSNBC.
