President Bush warned Tuesday that despite a new intelligence report showing that Iran froze its nuclear weapons program four years ago, Tehran could restart the program at any time.
“Look, Iran was dangerous, Iran is dangerous, and Iran will be dangerous if they have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon,” Bush said at a news conference in the White House.
“Iran had a hidden, covert nuclear weapons program,” he added. “What’s to say they couldn’t start another covert nuclear weapons program?”
Bush pointed out that Iran continues efforts to enrich uranium, ostensibly for nuclear energy, but could easily share that technology with a military program to develop a nuclear bomb.
He also emphasized that Iran is testing long-range nuclear missiles that might some day carry nuclear warheads.
Democrats accused the president of hyping the Iran threat for months after learning in August that the nuclear weapons program had been frozen. Bush said the intelligence that materialized in August was not analyzed and synthesized into a National Intelligence Estimate until last week.
“I refuse to believe that,” said Sen. Joseph Biden, a Democratic presidential candidate, on a conference call with reporters. “If that’s true, he has the most incompetent staff in modern American history. And he’s one of the most incompetent presidents in modern American history.”
Bush defended his staff.
“Members of my administration had been very clear about the weapons program earlier this year and, therefore, it’s important for the American people to see that there has been a re-evaluation of the Iranian issue,” Bush said. “The intelligence community has made a great discovery, and they’ve analyzed the discovery, and it’s now part of our government policy.”
Bush warned against being lulled into a false sense of security by the NIE.
“This report is not a ‘OK-everybody-needs-to-relax-and-quit report,’ ” he said. “This is a report that says what has happened in the past could be repeated, and that the policies used to cause the regime to halt are effective policies, and let’s keep them up, let’s continue to work together.”
