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Cheney Ratchets Up Rhetoric
Cheney, Like President, Has a Warning for Iran
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
Published: October 22, 2007
LANDSDOWNE, Va., Oct. 21 — Vice President Dick Cheney issued a pointed warning to Iran on Sunday, calling the government in Tehran “a growing obstacle to peace in the Middle East” and promising “serious consequences” if the government there does not abandon its nuclear program.
The remarks, just days after President Bush suggested that a nuclear-armed Iran could lead to “World War III,” amounted to Part II of a one-two punch from the administration at a moment when it is trying to persuade its allies in Europe to impose stiffer sanctions on Tehran. Those efforts grew more complicated on Saturday when Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator resigned on the eve of crucial talks with Europe.
“The Iranian regime needs to know that if it stays on its present course, the international community is prepared to impose serious consequences,” Mr. Cheney said, without specifying what those might be. “The United States joins other nations in sending a clear message: We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.”
Mr. Cheney delivered his warnings during a wide-ranging foreign policy speech to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a research organization. During the 35-minute talk, he also took aim at Syria, accusing Damascus of using “bribery and intimidation” to influence the coming elections in Lebanon, and he presented the case for the administration’s muscular approach to investigating suspected terrorists.
But Mr. Cheney reserved his harshest language for Iran. Calling it “the world’s most active state sponsor of terrorism,” he said, “our country, and the entire international community, cannot stand by as a terror-supporting state fulfills its most aggressive ambitions.”
That language is not radically different from what Mr. Cheney has used in the past. But people at the conference said that, placed in the context of Mr. Bush’s remarks, it represented a significant step toward increasing pressure on Iran. The speech seemed to lay the groundwork for the threat of military action — either because the administration actually intends to use force or because it wants to use the threat of force to prod Europe into action.
“This week we heard a significant ratcheting up of the rhetoric,” said Dennis Ross, who served as a Middle East envoy for President Clinton and the first President Bush and is now a scholar at the Washington Institute. Repeating Mr. Cheney’s remark about serious consequences, he said those were “strong words” with “serious implications.”
Mr. Bush has repeatedly said the administration would not “tolerate” a nuclear-armed Iran. But during a news conference on Wednesday, the president went further, saying of Iran: “If you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.”
That distinction — having the knowledge to make a nuclear weapon, as opposed to actually having a weapon — is one the administration has not made in the past. David Makovsky, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute who moderated a panel discussion before and after Mr. Cheney’s speech, said the vice president also seemed to draw a new red line when, instead of saying it is “not acceptable” for Iran to have a nuclear weapon, he said the world “will not allow” it.
“The first is a condition,” Mr. Makovsky said. “The second is a commitment.”
In an interview on Friday, the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, made it clear that he thought immediate attacks inside Iran would be a bad idea, while warning Tehran not to “mistake restraint for lack of commitment or lack of concern or lack of capability.”
The United Nations Security Council has already imposed sanctions on Iran and called on the government in Tehran to abandon its program to enrich uranium, and Iran has defied those sanctions. Now the United States is beginning to examine even tougher economic penalties, including a far broader cutoff of bank lending and technology to Iran than in the past.
Since 2005, Iran has taken a two-pronged approach toward the West, allowing its chief negotiator, Ali Larijani, to engage in talks with Europe and the International Atomic Energy Agency while the country’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, says there is no room to negotiate. Mr. Larijani has been viewed as more moderate than Mr. Ahmadinejad. Mr. Larijani resigned Saturday and is being replaced by more of a hard-liner.
The Bush administration, for its part, seems to be making an appeal directly to the Iranian people in the hope that they will rise up against the Ahmadinejad government. The White House wants to avoid any perception that it would use military force to bring about a change in government but has made clear that it would be only too happy if the Iranians brought it about themselves.
Mr. Bush said Wednesday that he intended to continue to pursue a policy of isolating Iran with the hope that “at some point in time, somebody else shows up and says it’s not worth the isolation.”
Mr. Cheney echoed that theme. “The spirit of freedom is stirring in Iran,” he said, adding, “America looks forward to the day when Iranians reclaim their destiny, the day that our two countries, as free and democratic nations, can be the closest of friends.”
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