Excerpts of Press Briefing by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice -May 18, 2008

SECRETARY RICE: Iran has significant vulnerabilities. They demonstrated one of those vulnerabilities in southern Iraq when they backed the special groups in Basra … they were armed and trained by Iran, and they got beat in southern Iraq. We’ve picked up Quds Force operatives.
they have a problem in southern Iraq now because the Iraqis are not very pleased that they are meddling in the affairs of Iraq with Shia splinter groups. So that’s a vulnerability.
Iran is having great difficulty accessing the international financial system because of the designations first that the U.N. has done through three Security Council resolutions — where the Iranians cannot claim, by the way, that it’s the United States going after them, it’s the Security Council
Iran has vulnerabilities because everybody in the region resents their efforts to aggressively interject themselves into Arab and Gulf affairs. When we get together as something like the GCC plus now Egypt, Jordan and Iraq, it is a strong signal that there is a strategic alignment in the Middle East that wants to challenge Iran.