Condoleezza Rice, US Secretary of State, who accompanies Bush in the Middle East trip, asserted: And what I would underscore is the United States considers Iran a threat, the single greatest threat in the region, a state that is supporting terrorists, a state that is continuing to try and destabilize fragile young democracies, a state that does have nuclear ambitions and a state that was only, in terms of the weaponization, prevailed upon to suspend or to halt that weaponization because there’s been intense pressure from the international community. And that says to the United States that intense pressure has got to continue and the world will make a very big mistake if it thinks that Iran is not a danger.
Rice added: We have been reassuring our allies for quite some time now by increasing our — their defense capability, by increasing American presence in the Gulf, by taking on the Iranians when we find them in Iraq and by making it difficult for them to move financially by sanctioning their banks. I mean, we’ve been going at this for some time. That’s the reassurance that we would give and the President doesn’t take his options off the table. No American President will.