Feith to 'Post': US action against Iran can't be ruled out

[Tinoire]

Dec. 12, 2004 3:24 | Updated Dec. 12, 2004 16:06

Feith to 'Post': US action against Iran can't be ruled out
By CAROLINE GLICK


Link to JPost article here (it breaks if I post it the simple way)

Douglas Feith
Photo: DOD


The US hopes that Iran will follow Libya's lead in abandoning its nuclear program, but nobody should rule out the possibility of military action against Teheran's nuclear sites if it does not, US Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith told The Jerusalem Post in an exclusive interview.

Feith stated that the US is now concentrating on "a process to try to get the existing international legal mechanisms – the nonproliferation treaty <and> the International Atomic Energy Agency – to work, to bring the kind of pressure to bear on Iran that would induce the Iranians to follow the path that Libya took in deciding that they were actually better off in abandoning their WMD <weapons of mass destruction> programs."

Feith stressed that the Americans are interested in seeing whether the suspension of uranium-enrichment activities that the Iranians agreed to last month in a deal with France, Germany and Britain "can get turned into a permanent abandonment."

But strikingly, whereas British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw last month ruled out any possibility of military action against Iranian nuclear sites should the diplomatic path lead to failure, Feith said that "I don't think that anybody should be ruling in or ruling out anything while we are conducting diplomacy."

In the wide-ranging interview conducted on Friday, Feith, who will be remaining in his position during US President George W. Bush's second term, told the Post that democratic reform of the Arab world, including in US-allied Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, will be the linchpin of Bush's foreign policy in the next four years.

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http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1102752565828