Iran has to live up to its international obligations. . . . The president has said that our patience is not unlimited.
Clearly, Iran has influence in Iraq. Iraq has a majority Shi'a population, they have relationships to Iran. Some are natural.
There are those who simply want to live their lives, and feel they cannot live the way they want to in Iran. Others are ideologically motivated: They will stay no matter what and try to change things.
What Iran wants and what North Korea wants is respect.
We support any deal that denies Iran nuclear weapons, that has a continuous and robust inspection mechanism and that has snap-back provisions in case Iran violates the agreement. Our concern is that Iran will use the income it receives as a result of the lifting of the nuclear sanctions in order to fund its nefarious activities in the region.
Iraq may have been a preview of that, but it's still redeemable if we get out fast. In a war with Iran, we'll get dragged down for 20 or 30 years. The world will condemn us. We will lose our position in the world.
Americans have eliminated Iran's worst enemies, the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam [Hussein]. I occasionally threatened my Iranian counterpart in Kabul that one day I would send him a big bill for what we did. But, seriously, Iran is pursuing a dual strategy in Iraq. On the one hand, the Iranians, after decades of hostility, are now interested in good relations. On the other hand, they want to keep the country weak and dominate the region.
We can't say whether Tehran is supporting Al Qaeda, but we do know that al-Qaida people come here from Pakistan through Iran.
Iran is undertaking a massive effort to expand its influence in southern Iraq. At the same time, that influence decreases the more the political process in Iraq progresses.
Seen from the United States or Europe, Irans nuclear program often causes most concern, but from the perspective of countries in the Asia-Pacific region, the North Korean program is equally worrying.
The Iran nuclear issue is on top of the agenda. It is a very complicated issue with long history.
Even if you look at Iran, those campaigners for human rights there, they don't want to have anything to do with America, because they are afraid that having American support will be the kiss of death for their movement. And that's really tragic.
I meant that people will take anything that gives them a lift, whether it's alcohol or cocaine or the consciousness-expanding drugs or opiates. In Iran, until recently, they sold opium in shops legally, and they had 3,000,000 addicts in a population of 15,000,000. I don't believe that all those people were escaping from "complexes" or anything of the sort. They were simply exposed to it.
We do not want to be in the middle of an axis that starts in the Mediterranean and ends in Tehran. We do not want to be a barricade for [Iran's] nuclear facilities.
A foreign threat is useful to put things in order in one's own camp, to make one's allies follow the bloc discipline. Iran does not fit this role too well, and it is very tempting to revive Russia's image of the enemy. But nobody in Europe is afraid anymore.
In 2009, US President [Barack] Obama said that the missile defense only serves as protection from Iranian nuclear missiles. But now there is an international treaty with Iran that bans Tehran from developing a potential military nuclear project.
The International Atomic Energy Agency is controlling this, the sanctions against Iran are lifted - but still the US are working on their missile defense system. What is the point of this?
It was at a certain stage (you might have forgotten, haven't you?) that the United States actively collaborated with Saddam when he was at war with Iran: weapons were supplied, diplomatic and political support was provided and so on. Then the US fell out with him for some reason and decided to do away with him.
If the Democrats feel they have lost the public's confidence in their stewardship of national security, then the threat of Iran offers a Hillary Clinton, Howard Dean, or John Kerry an opportunity to get out front now and pledge support for a united effort - attacking Bush from the right about too tepid a stance rather from the predictable left that we are 'hegemonic' and 'imperialistic' every time we use force abroad.
Unfortunately, every time the United States has tried to pursue a peace deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians by beating back Iran and trying to isolate Iran, it has failed. And it has failed under much better circumstances.
Beyond that is the fear that the United States will end up negotiating and agreeing to a deal with Iran. The Israelis do not like that either because they fear the deal will come at the expense of Israel's security interests. From an Israeli perspective, the NIE makes the risk of some sort of settlement much greater.
Iran has, by virtue of its growth and by virtue of the United States' mistakes in Iraq, tilted the balance of power in the Middle East. That is the case, but that doesn't necessarily mean it is a threat.
I do believe that the very tense relationship between the United States and Iran presents a challenge to the United States. But to discuss Iran as that type of a threat I find somewhat unconvincing, mindful of the fact that Iran actually doesn't have those military capabilities that would be needed to refer to it as that type of threat.
From the Israeli perspective, the fear is that if pressure is off of Iran, Israel would be left having to accept the balance of power in the region significantly shifting toward Iran. It's not an existential threat, but it would definitely be a problem for Israel.
Iran is isolated on its nuclear program and support for terrorism.
