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United States mulls pre-emptive military action against Iran

2006-03-17 Washington: The White House called Iran the greatest threat to the US on Thursday and warned that it will take pre-emptive military action if necessary to protect itself.

"We may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran," the White House said in a blueprint, the 'National Security Strategy' of the United States.

"This diplomatic effort (Iran) must succeed if confrontation is to be avoided," said the document without elaborating.

The document cited other concerns about Iran: that it sponsors terrorism, threatens Israel, seeks to thwart Middle East peace, disrupts democracy in Iraq and denies freedom to Iranians. It said that these can only be resolved if Iran makes the strategic decision to change its policies, open up its political system and allow freedom. "This is the ultimate goal of US policy," the document said.

The document sought to draw a line between Iran's leaders and the Iranian people, saying that "our strategy is to block the threats posed by the regime while expanding our engagement and outreach to the people the regime is oppressing".

The document said nonetheless, that "we must be prepared to act alone if necessary". North Korea also "presents a long and bleak record of duplicity and bad-faith negotiations" the document said.

But the document emphasised the need for diplomacy, saying that "there is little of lasting consequence that we can accomplish in the world without the sustained cooperation of our allies and partners".

In other areas, the United States warned Russia that its relations with the West depend on pursuing democratic reforms, and urged China to follow economic opening with political freedom – while saying that Washington would "hedge" for the possibility that Beijing does not do so.

The document made clear that Washington does not view the failure to find weapons of mass destruction (WMD), at the core of the public case for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, as a blow against its strategy of preventive war.

"The place of pre-emption in our national security strategy remains the same," the White House said on Thursday. "We do not rule out the use of force before attacks occur."

The document branded North Korea, Iran, Syria, Cuba, Belarus, Burma and Zimbabwe as tyrannies, but warned that tyrannies that seek weapons of mass destruction "threaten our immediate security interests".

On Sudan's troubled Darfur region, the blueprint again called the violence there "genocide" but offered no new solutions while pleading that "Patient efforts to end conflicts should not be mistaken for tolerance of the intolerable".

On Latin America, the document singled out Venezuela and referred to President Hugo Chavez as "a demagogue awash in oil money", who "is undermining democracy and seeking to destablise the region".

Meanwhile, the head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Ali Larijani said on Thursday that Tehran was ready to negotiate with the United States to resolve the problems in Iraq.