U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney yesterday said that Iran is "aggressively" seeking a nuclear weapon by pushing ahead with its uranium enrichment program, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, Jan. 8).
The United States and other Western powers have expressed concern that Iran could tap its enrichment activities to produce a key nuclear-weapon ingredient, but Tehran insists it only wants to generate nuclear power plant fuel. A 2007 U.S. intelligence report indicated that Iran ended its nuclear-weapon efforts several years ago, but the document has not found favor in all sectors of the Bush administration.
"They have continued to aggressively pursue nuclear weapons, in terms of their efforts to enrich uranium to produce fissile materials so they can build a bomb," Cheney told AP. "One of the things I worry about most is that linkage between a government that supports terror and terrorists on the one hand, and on the other hand is developing a number of deadlier ... weapons. And I think that's a combination that is a scary prospect, and ought to be."
Cheney urged the international community to pursue new economic penalties aimed at pressuring Iran to halt its enrichment work. The U.N. Security Council has already enacted three sanctions resolutions targeting the Middle Eastern state.
The vice president also warned that North Korea has failed to disclose all of its nuclear programs and assets as promised in a six-nation denuclearization agreement (see GSN , Jan. 8).
"It looks like they have a continuing, ongoing program to produce highly enriched uranium" and "they helped the Syrians build a nuclear reactor," he said, referring to an alleged reactor site bombed by Israel in September 2007 (see GSN, Dec. 18, 2008; Deb Riechmann, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Jan. 9).