Iran working on nuclear bomb, says Rumsfeld

[Tinoire]

Iran working on nuclear bomb, says Rumsfeld

Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington and Jonathan Steele
Thursday June 12, 2003
The Guardian

The US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, yesterday tapped into deepening international concern about a clandestine nuclear programme in Iran, warning that Tehran was actively working to develop a bomb.
Mr Rumsfeld's remarks, delivered during a visit to Germany, appeared to be aimed at exerting pressure on Tehran and the UN's nuclear monitoring agency, which meets next week in Vienna to decide how to respond to Iran's failure to honour nuclear safeguards.

His intervention also appeared to advance the next project of Pentagon hawks: regime change in Tehran.

(snip)

"The intelligence community in the United States and around the world currently assess that Iran does not have nuclear weapons," Mr Rumsfeld said during a visit to the southern German town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen.

"The assessment is that they do have a very active programme and are likely to have nuclear weapons in a relatively short period of time."

(snip)

"We're going to actively oppose any Iranian influence in that country that attempts to make Iraq an Iran-type model and we'll do it with words to start with and we'll do it energetically," Mr Rumsfeld said. The US backs a number of exile groups, including Reza Pahlavi, the son of the former shah, who uses a satellite TV station in Los Angeles to beam anti-regime views into Iran.

(snip)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,975496,00.html

There are those troublesome phrases again...