Vice President Cheney yesterday:
Well, we are, I’d say, very concerned about Iran, because for two reasons, again, one, they do have a program. We believe they have a fairly robust new nuclear program. That’s been developed by, or being pursued I guess would be the best way to put it, by members of the E.U.–“the Brits, the Germans and the French–“have been negotiating with the Iranians to get them to allow greater transparency in their program so the outside world can be confident they’re not building weapons, that it’s for peaceful purposes.
The other problem we have, of course, is that Iran is a noted sponsor of terror. They’ve been the prime backers of the Hezbollah over the years, and they have, in fact, been–used terror in various incendiary ways to kill Americans and a lot of other folks around the globe, too, and that combination is of great concern.
We’ll continue to try to address those issues diplomatically, continue to work with the Europeans. At some point, if the Iranians don’t live up to their commitments, the next step will be to take it to the U.N. Security Council, and seek the imposition of international sanctions to force them to live up to the commitments and obligations they’ve signed up to under the non-proliferation treaty, and it’s–but it is a–you know, you look around the world at potential trouble spots, Iran is right at the top of the list.
Hmm. “Nuclear weapons program” . . . “sponsoring terror” . . . “enforcing U.N. resolutions”–it all sounds so familiar. I wonder where we have heard those before?
Problem is, it’s also truer now than it was before (although I think it’s also truer that this is a more rational, deterrable bunch than Saddam). The other problem, of course, is that we probably couldn’t do it (take out significant percentage of their WMD facilities) even if we wanted to.
Iraq was supposed to be the “easiest” domino to topple, starting a chain reaction in the region. Hasn’t been playing out that way.