U.S.: Iran Has 'Capability'Monday, February 06, 2006
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Iran used negotiations with the European Union to play for time and has now achieved the ability to both develop nuclear weapons and deliver them, a senior Bush administration official said Monday.
At a news conference at the Foreign Press Center, Robert G. Joseph, the undersecretary of state for arms control, cited "tremendous resources" as well as a "very sophisticated, a very advanced scientific and technical community" as helpful to Iran.
He offered no assessment of how long it might take Iran to produce nuclear weapons.
President Bush, approving of a decision by the International Atomic Energy Agency's board of governors to report Iran to the U.N. Security Council, said in a statement Saturday that Iran was "continuing to develop the capability to build nuclear weapons."
Joseph took it a step further. "I would say that Iran does have the capability to develop nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them," he said in a response to a question.
With the Europeans having declared two years of negotiations with Iran at a dead-end, Joseph said "there is no end of diplomacy" and that taking Iran to the Security Council was "moving diplomacy to the next level."