[NYTr] Big Bro Cheney Threatens Iran

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by MichaelP, axtv-l - Oct 21, 2007

Big Brother speaks up -M 

AFP via Yahoo - Oct 21, 2007
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/afp/20071021/twl-us-iran-nuclear-iraq-lebanon-syria-7e07afd.html

Agence France Presse

AFP 

LANSDOWNE,  United  States  (AFP)  - - Vice President Dick Cheney said 
Sunday  the United States would not permit Iran to get nuclear weapons
and warned  of  "serious  consequences"  if  it  continues  to enrich
uranium.

Cheney,   considered   the  toughest  hardliner  on  Iran  in  the  US 
administration,  did  not specify what measures might be taken against 
Tehran  however,  and  did  not  mention  the  possibility of military 
action.

"The  Iranian  regime  needs  to  know that if it stays on its present 
course,  the  international  community  is  prepared to impose serious 
consequences,"  he  said  in  a speech to the Washington Institute for 
Near East Policy.

"The  United States joins other nations in sending a clear message: We 
will  not  allow  Iran  to  have  a  nuclear weapon," said the hawkish 
Cheney,  who  reportedly  favors  military strikes against the Islamic 
republic.

"Our country and the entire international community cannot stand by as
a terror-supporting state fulfills its most aggressive ambitions," he
said, accusing Iran anew of abetting attacks on US troops in Iraq.

Iran  was "the world's most active state sponsor of terror," added the 
vice president, after President George W. Bush warned last week that a 
nuclear-equipped Iran evoked the threat of "World War III."

Cheney  also  rebuffed  US  critics who want a swift end to the war in 
Iraq.

"We're  going  to  complete  the mission so that another generation of 
Americans does not need to go back and do it again," he said.

Cheney's  terminology  recalled  the warnings issued in 2002 by the UN 
Security  Council  that  Iraqi  dictator Saddam Hussein faced "serious 
consequences"  if he failed to come clean on his alleged stockpiles of 
weapons of mass destruction.

Several  US media reports have said that Cheney is encouraging Bush to 
consider   missile  strikes  that  could  go  beyond  Iranian  nuclear 
facilities   to   take   in   command-and-control  systems  of  Iran's 
Revolutionary Guards.

Campaigning  for  the 2008 White House nomination, top Republicans and 
Democratic  frontrunner  Hillary  Clinton  insist that they will never 
tolerate  Iran  being in a position to menace its neighbors and Israel 
with atomic arms.

Clinton  last  month  voted  for a Senate resolution that declared the 
Revolutionary  Guards  a  terror  organization  --  a  step  that  her 
Democratic  rival  Barack  Obama  said represented a "blank check" for 
Bush to wage war on Iran.

Iran, which insists it only wants peaceful nuclear energy, has brushed 
aside  US  warnings,  and  announced  Saturday  that  its  top nuclear 
negotiator Ali Larijani had resigned and was being replaced by an ally
of hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

"Iran  is  pursuing  technology  that  can  be used to develop nuclear 
weapons.  The  world  knows  this,"  Cheney said, noting that Iran had 
refused to stop enriching uranium despite two rounds of sanctions from
the UN Security Council.

He  said  "the  regime  continues  to do so, and continues to practice 
delay and deception in an obvious attempt to buy time."

Cheney's  new  warning  came  five  months  after he declared from the 
hangar deck of a powerfully-armed US aircraft carrier in the Gulf that
the United States would not let Iran acquire nuclear arms.

But the US administration continues to back efforts by Britain, France
and Germany  to  negotiate  an  end  to Iranian uranium enrichment in
return for energy and economic incentives.

Middle  East  experts who spoke at the Washington Institute conference 
after  Cheney's  speech  noted that US rhetoric against Iran was being 
sharply escalated.

"The  language  on  Iran  is  quite  significant,"  former Middle East 
presidential  envoy Dennis Ross said. "That's very strong words and it 
does have implications," he said.

Cheney  also  accused  Syria  of  using  "bribery and intimidation" to 
undermine a free vote in Lebanon's upcoming presidential election.

"Lebanon  has  the right to conduct the upcoming elections free of any 
foreign  interference,"  he said, insisting that Washington would work 
with  its  allies  "to preserve Lebanon's hard-won independence and to 
defeat the forces of extremism and terror."