Condoleezza Rice, US Secretary of State called the Iranian regime the most important and greatest threat in the Middle East and asserted on the necessity to confront it.
In a roundtable talk, Rice said: Now as to Iran as a subject, yes, there will be discussions of Iran. There will be discussions of Iran in Israel, in the Gulf, all around because Iran is the single most important, greatest threat to the kind of Middle East that we all want to see. It’s a supporter of terrorism in Iraq, in Lebanon, in the Palestinian territories. It has nuclear ambitions. And let me just say one thing about the NIE. There is nothing in the NIE that suggests Iran is not dangerous. The NIE talks about a — one of the three elements of a nuclear program, which is weaponization. Enrichment and reprocessing, which can lead to fissile materials, continues. The desire to get ever longer — the effort to get ever longer ranges of ballistic missiles continues.
Referring to NIE report regarding Iran’s suspension of its nuclear program in 2003, Rice underlined Iranian regime’s cover up for years and said: Now, did they halt it? Perhaps; if they halted it, they did it apparently because of international pressure, which says to me you want to keep up international pressure. And it also says that Iran has a lot of answers to give to the world about what the state of that program was when they supposedly halted it. So this — the NIE should not be understood to say that Iran is not a danger.
Referring to misunderstandings about the NIE report , the US Secretary of State said: 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.