remarks by secretary robert
Gates on
options with iran
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
December 11, 2009
Excerpts
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QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, in the past we have often considered the possibility of military action against Iran should they continue the development of nuclear armament, which they have continued to do. What is the likelihood of the United States going into Iran in the foreseeable future to stop them?
SEC. GATES: Iran is one of the most complex national security problems that I think we've faced in my whole career. There are no good options in Iran. And if we've learned -- one of the thing that weighs on me is if we have learned anything from Iraq over the past six years, it is the inherent unpredictability of war.
Frankly, Iran's stiffing the international community on some of the proposals that they actually agreed to at the beginning of October, I think has brought the international community, including the Russians and the Chinese, together in a way that they have not been in terms of significant additional sanctions on the Iranians.
What -- the challenge of the -- first of all, let me just say, you never take any options off the table. But the reality is that any military action would only buy some time, maybe two or three years. So at the end of the day, the way to avoid a nuclear-armed Iran is to put together a package of incentives and disincentives that persuade the Iranian government that they would actually be less secure with nuclear weapons than if they had them -- that they could spark a nuclear arms race throughout the Middle East, throughout the region; that their people will suffer enormously from even more stringent economic sanctions.
I think that there's a lot more political turmoil in Iran today than there was before their elections. I think the elections had little credibility with many in Iran, and you're seeing continued turbulence. So there's a political dynamic going on in Iran today that we didn't see a year ago. And what the implications of that are are uncertain at this point.
But I think that you're going to see some significant additional sanctions imposed by the international community, assuming that the Iranians don't change course and agree to do the things that they signed up to do at the beginning of October.
I think we have some time for these efforts to work. But it's clearly -- I talked about the consequences potentially of military action. The consequences of a nuclear-armed Iran in the region are also enormous, and so we'll just have to keep working our way through it.
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