Bloomberg – U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Iran faces “deeper isolation” if it persists with its nuclear program and the U.S. doesn’t rule out any option in its efforts to persuade Tehran to cease uranium enrichment.
`Thus far Iran has not been interested in any of the offers put to it,” Rice said following a speech in the northwest England electoral constituency of U.K. Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. Iran faces “deeper isolation” unless it cooperates, she said.
“It isn’t possible to conceive” of enrichment taking place on Iranian soil and the Bush administration never takes anything “off the table” in its policy toward the Middle Eastern country, although military action is not on the agenda now, she said
Rice yesterday suggested the U.S. is prepared for lengthy diplomacy to rein in Iran’s nuclear ambitions after the United Nations refrained from attaching consequences to its demand that Iran curb its program and open it to scrutiny. The U.S. suspects Iran is engaged in a secret attempt to build a nuclear weapon.
Rice and Straw yesterday met in Berlin with their counterparts from France, Germany, Russia and China to discuss how to deter Iran from seeking nuclear weapons.
Iran must suspend nuclear fuel enrichment and prove that its atomic program is intended for “exclusively” peaceful purposes, the United Nations Security Council’s five veto- wielding members said yesterday.
The Security Council’s 15 members told Iran, in a unanimous and non-binding declaration, to stop enriching uranium and to show compliance with the requirements of the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency within 30 days. The Council didn’t specify the consequences should Iran fail to comply.
The participants in the Berlin meeting, called to chart the next moves in the standoff, used a joint statement to urge Iran to halt “all enrichment-related activities.”
