U.S. Stays Course On Iran Nukes

The Bush administration will keep using diplomacy to try to end Iran's drive for nuclear weapons, but there is no sign yet that Iran — or North Korea — has decided to follow Libya's lead and abandon its dangerous goal, a senior Bush administration official said Tuesday.

"The path we are pursuing is the path of diplomacy," Undersecretary of State John Bolton said. He said the administration is working with European and other nations to seek a peaceful end to more than 18 years of a large-scale nuclear program by the Tehran government that poses a "grave threat" in the Middle East and beyond.

The diplomatic drive is focused on the United Nations, where the Security Council has the power to impose economic and other sanctions on Iran, he said. "Never has the Security Council been so feared," Bolton said.

And by trying to rally other nations to call for Council sanctions, the administration is contradicting accusations of it having a go-it-alone foreign policy, Bolton said in apparent reference to attacks by Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry and other critics of the administration's overseas actions, especially the war against Iraq.

Bolton cited more than a half-dozen activities by Iran that he said could not be explained except as being part of a program to develop nuclear weapons. This included uranium enrichment and plutonium programs.

Iran has never explained itself to the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency and to European intermediaries, offering instead lies and deceptions, Bolton said. "There isn't a thread of credibility," he said.

"If we permit Iran's deception to go on much longer it will be far too late," he said at a conference sponsored by the Hudson Institute, a private research group, and New Republic Magazine.

"This regime has to be isolated for its bad behavior," Bolton said.

Neither Iran nor North Korea, cited by President Bush along with Iraq as part of an "axis of evil," has made a strategic decision to give up nuclear weapons, he said.

Bolton is a hard-liner within the State Department. North Korea last year referred to him as "human scum," after Bolton in a speech said in his speech that North Korean leader Kim Jung-Il lived in luxury, "hundreds of thousands of his people locked in prison camps with millions more mired in abject poverty, scrounging the ground for food."

In the past, Bolton has clashed with intelligence officials over his characterizations of alleged weapons of mass destruction in other countries.

The New York Times reported that the CIA had blocked Bolton in 2003 from telling Congress that Syria's biological and chemical weapons programs were a danger to the region. The intelligence agency disagreed with the assessment.

Also last year, an intelligence analyst, Christian Westermann of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, told the Senate Intelligence Committee that he had felt pressure from Bolton after the two disagreed over whether Cuba had a biological weapons program.

Bolton said last year that the U.S. believed Cuba had such a program.

Iran last week test-fired a new version of its ballistic Shahab-3 missile, which was already capable of reaching U.S. forces in the Middle East and has since been upgraded in response to Israeli missile development.

The Shahab-3, which Iran last successfully tested in 2002 before providing it to the elite Revolutionary Guards, is the country's longest-range ballistic missile, with a range of about 810 miles.

It has since been modified to improve its range and accuracy. Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani said last week that the modifications were in response to efforts by Israel to improve its own missiles.

Israel has jointly developed with the United States the Arrow anti-ballistic missile system in response to Shahab-3's threat.

Developed jointly by Israel Aircraft Industries and Chicago-based Boeing Co. at a cost of more than $1 billion, the Arrow is one of the few systems capable of intercepting and destroying missiles at high altitudes. Its development followed the 1991 Gulf War, when Iraq fired 39 Scud missiles at Israel.

The commander of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards, Gen. Rahim Safavi, warned Iran will crush Israel if it attacks the Persian state, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported Wednesday.

"If Israel is mad enough to attack Iran's national interests, we will come down on them like a hammer and will crush their bones," IRNA quoted Safavi as saying. It was unclear what prompted Safavi to make his remarks.

Iran says the missile is entirely Iranian-made, but U.S. officials says the missile is based on the North Korean "No Dong" missile design and produced in Iran. The United States also accuses China of assisting Iran's missile program.

U.S. intelligence officials have previously said that Iran can probably fire several Shahab-3's in an emergency, but that it has not yet developed a completely reliable missile.

Iran launched an arms development program during its 1980-88 war with Iraq to compensate for a U.S. weapons embargo. Since 1992, Iran has produced its own tanks, armored personnel carriers, missiles and a fighter plane.