The Vice President made the following Iran related comments today in an interview on the Tony Snow Show: “Do you have any doubt that they’re trying to build up a nuclear weapons program?”
VICE PRESIDENT: No, I think it’s pretty clear that that’s their objective. If what they’re really interested in is generating nuclear power, generating electricity from running reactors, they’ve been offered that opportunity, a guaranteed source of fuel that would be enriched only to the level necessary to run a civilian reactor. The Russians would then take back the spent fuel so that it couldn’t be reprocessed for the plutonium in it. And the Iranians could achieve their objective of having nuclear energy. They’ve not been satisfied with that. What they want is the ability to enrich the uranium themselves, and that would allow them to take it up to a much higher level and purity that is required for nuclear weapons. The effort we’ve made to date through the EU, the European Union, working with the Brits and the French and the Germans has been to reach a diplomatic solution to this problem. But so far they’ve been unsuccessful. And given the track record there, as well as given some of the more outrageous statements that the new President has made, Ahmadinejad, doesn’t inspire confidence, I don’t think, in anyone. It obviously is an increasingly significant problem that the world is going to have to address.
“Should the world be considering a serious economic embargo of Iran?”
VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I think the next step will be probably to go before the U.N. Security Council. And that would be probably the number one item on the agenda would be the resolution that could be enforced by sanctions, were they to fail to comply with it. Now, that’s speculative at this point. No decision has been made on that, but that will be next step once the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency meets and concludes that the diplomatic track they’ve been on isn’t going to work, then the next step would be for the Board of Governors to vote to refer the entire matter to the Security Council.
“Would it be fair to say that at least in the abstract we would like a regime change there?”
VICE PRESIDENT: I think it would be fair to say we’d like the Iranian government to operate in a way that is consistent with the standards that we expect of members of the international community. Not only do they appear to be on the path to develop nuclear weapons, but this also has been one of the prime terror-sponsoring states in world. They’ve been the prime mover behind Hezbollah. They have got a track record with respect to supporting terror that is a very bad one, if I can put it in those terms. So this is a nation, whose government I don’t believe serves them well at this point. I think you’re right that there are a lot of Iranians who would like to see the policies changed. And we’ll see what happens. They have — occasionally hold elections, but they’re very special kinds of elections. They’re really not free and fair elections. The old guard controls who actually gets on the ballot, and so we have not seen, say, them produce what I would think of as a responsible government.
