Chile's TVN Interview with Secretary of State Colin Powell: Iran is Working to Develop a Nuclear Warhead (Excerpts)

November 18, 2004
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QUESTION: The United States government is saying now that Iran had planned and has the intention to create nuclear weapons. That credibility can have that word if the argument that the government use for going to the war in Iraq are not true, at least the affair of the mass destruction weapons.

SECRETARY POWELL: Well let's look at the facts here. When we first came in the office we began to highlight to the international community that Iran was moving in a direction of a nuclear weapon. That their nuclear programs were not simply for the purpose of generating power. And everybody said the Americans are overreacting. And then suddenly, people found out that what we were saying is accurate. Iran was concealing programs, some Iranian dissidents came forward with information of where they were hiding these programs, and the IAEA went and found these programs. And so the evidence that has been put forward so far demonstrates clearly that Iran has been moving in the direction of creating a nuclear weapon, and that is why the International Atomic Energy Agency got so involved, why the Russians have been careful about providing fuel for the new reactor Bushehr and why the European Union sent their three foreign ministers in to get the Iranians to stop.

Now, I made a statement yesterday that said we had some information, I've seen some information, and the dissidents have put out more information, that suggest that the Iranians are also working on the designs one would have to have for putting such a warhead into a missile. This shouldn't be brand new news. This shouldn't surprise anybody. If they had been working on a nuclear weapon and design a warhead, certainly they were also trying to figure out how they would deliver such a warhead.

So I think that the Iranians still have much more to do to convince the international community that they are not moving in the direction of a nuclear weapon, and they will comply with their obligations to the IAEA, and they will this time meet the commitments they are making to the European Union.

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