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 Press Briefing by National Security Advisor Steve Hadley 08/07/06 (Topic: Iran) — Tuesday, August 08, 2006 — MR. HADLEY: No, they haven't. On the contrary. Iran is very much integrated into the international community. We have had sanctions on Iran, but the international community has not, the Europeans have not. It's interesting, Iran is a different case than North Korea, which has already isolated itself. Iran has not. Iran has commercial relations, it has diplomatic relations, it sees itself as a regional power and a global power. And the question is whether it wants to go in a situation where the international community basically turns its back on Iran. That would be a situation we've never had before. And, indeed, one of the things that has been, I believe, this President's achievement has been if you look at where we were with the Europeans in the 1990s about our views on Iran, it was not a shared conception. The Europeans, the Russians did not view Iran as a threat, let alone the strategic threat that it has become. And one of the things this President has done is get to the point where we have now the whole international community saying Iran is making a strategic challenge to us all by its support for terror, by its supporting Hezbollah, for the kinds of things we see in Lebanon, by the way it treats its own people, by its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Think about how difficult this crisis would be now if Iran had a nuclear weapon. And what we're heartened by is the international community is beginning to understand what is at stake in the broader context of this current struggle. That's why the G8 report and statement was so important. That's why it's been interesting that Russia has gone from supporting Iran's nuclear program to, in recent years, cooperating with the rest of us in trying to rein that program in. So there has been a sea change, and Iran needs to take that into account. It is really confronting the international community. And the international community is wakening to the challenge. White House Press Corps | Press Briefing | Steve Hadley | News Media | Bush Administration | Iran | Middle East >> Full Story
Posted by WhiteHousePressCorps.org @ 12:09:00 AM
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