QUESTION: Madame Secretary, thanks for spending time with us today.

SECRETARY RICE: A pleasure to be with you.

QUESTION: You said several times this week that when the United Nations reconvenes on the issue of Iranian nuclear ambitions, that they must take very strong steps to stop Iran from continuing to enrich uranium. Can you be specific about how strong sanctions you would support up to and including possible limits on Iranian oil exports?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, the Security Council has many options at its disposal. Clearly, we're going to have to consider measures that are consistent with Iranian behavior. Iran has done nothing since the last Security Council -- the presidential statement in the Security Council -- but defy the international community. So we're not going to have another presidential statement.

Now, what measures we will take, obviously we will have to discuss with other members of the Security Council and there are different means that could be used. You could use asset freezes, you could use financial measures. No one has to jump to the idea -- you could use political isolation. And by the way, the Iranian Government is doing a very fine job of isolating itself already from the international community, not the Iranian people, nobody wishes to isolate, but the Iranian regime, so there are any number of possible measures. I know that our European colleagues have been talking about what might be possible, but the Security Council has got to act. That's the most important thing, so that we can maintain the credibility of the international system.

QUESTION: Is U.S. military action on the table?

SECRETARY RICE: Look, the President isn't going to take any of his options off the table. We are on a diplomatic course. We believe that a concerted, strong diplomatic activity, action, can indeed work, that Iran is not a state that wishes to be isolated. And that if the world community really stays together with a strong, singular message that, in fact, we can get Iran to comply. But the President doesn't take any of his options off the table.

QUESTION: What is the Administration's position on regime change in Iran?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, we believe that the Iranian people certainly deserve all of the rights that are there for other people around the world. The President's been very clear in his democracy agenda that he believes that there are no people on earth who should not have the ability to choose those who are going to govern them, and I mean really choose them, not have some number of people put up by a Guardian Council and other people rejected as candidates. The President's been very clear that he believes that the right to free speech is something that every human should have, and so the Iranian people deserve those rights as well.

QUESTION: Do you hope that regime change will, in fact, occur?

SECRETARY RICE: We're concentrating on the behavior of this regime. We're concentrating on the fact that it is a regime that has defied the international community on its nuclear ambitions and a regime that is the central banker of terrorism in places like Lebanon and the Palestinian territories and that it's behaving badly in Iraq in ways that are really exacerbating an already tense security situation. And of course we're concerned about the treatment of the Iranian people. But this is about the behavior of the regime. That is where the international consensus is and we are part of that international consensus.

. . .