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INTERVIEW Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice With Andrea Mitchell of NBC News February 8, 2005 Rome, Italy

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QUESTION: There are still disagreements over China, over whether or not there should be a continued arms embargo over China and over Iran principally. The Europeans believe that the President in his inaugural address was in fact promoting regime change in Iran. What can you say to them about what U.S. policy is? Are we telling the Iranians that they should rise up and rebel against their government?

SECRETARY RICE: We're telling the Iranian people that they've not been forgotten in the efforts to spread freedom and democracy around the world. The Iranian people are a sophisticated people with a great culture and a great heritage and tradition. They are people that have demonstrated time and again that they want to live under democratic principles, and yet they live under an un-elected few who are frustrating those aspirations and this message to them - a message, by the way, that I think is being echoed in other places - is that the behavior of the Iranian regime internally is a concern for those of us in the trans-Atlantic Alliance, that we're not going to forget that...

QUESTION: ...you called them loathsome ...

SECRETARY RICE: ...well, the human rights abuses in Iran are. You cannot summarily in effect execute young women for certain kinds of behaviors and not consider that to be loathsome. You cannot throw the reformists in jail with really no process and not consider that to be loathsome.

QUESTION: Some of our allies - Egypt, Saudi Arabia - do the same thing without that kind of harsh criticism from you and the President.

SECRETARY RICE: Well, we've been very clear that we expect a lot from our friends as well. And we are seeing throughout the Middle East that the conversation is changing about what must be done. That even at the Arab League meetings last year, there was a conversation about reform. That is why when the American President puts something on the agenda of this sort, it begins to change the way that people talk and the way that people behave. But the Iranian regime is special in its internal behavior and in its external behavior, that seeks the nuclear weapon, that is engaged in supporting the very terrorists who are trying to destroy the peace process that we've just been talking about.

QUESTION: One of the Iranian leaders was quoted in USA Today as saying that "the U.S. would not dare to attack us. We have got used to this nonsense" - this is quoting Rafsanjani. "Miss Rice is a bit emotional. She talks tough, but she cannot be tough herself."

SECRETARY RICE: Well, we ought to be emotional about people who live essentially in bondage. We ought to be. Because those of us who are lucky enough to have been born on the right side of freedom's divide have an obligation to those who are still caught on the other side of that divide to care about their progress. But the United States believes that our concerns about Iran can be resolved diplomatically as long as there is unity of purpose, as long as there is unity of message to the Iranians, we believe that we have diplomatic solutions here.

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INTERVIEW Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice With Franco Di Mare of RAI Channel One TV of Italy February 8, 2005 Rome, Italy

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QUESTION: A few days ago you said that Iran is not on your agenda. Is there any country who is on the American agenda right now?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, Iran is clearly on our agenda as some of the international agenda. It is just that we believe that there are diplomatic solutions that are still possible for the Iranian situation. But Iran has got to live up to its international obligations, not to seek a nuclear weapon under cover of civilian nuclear power. Iran needs to stop its support for terrorism. We were just talking about the Middle East and Iran supports terrorists and rejectionists groups that are trying to literally blow up the peace process and that must stop. And then finally, Iran cannot remain isolated from the region's positive trends. The Iranian people deserve better than what they are getting from the un-elected few.

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