LONDON/TEHRAN, 1 June 2003 — The United States would like to see a different kind of regime in Iran, which will move away from “pursuing an aggressive agenda based on terrorism and weapons of mass destruction”, Condoleezza Rice, national security adviser to US President George W. Bush, told yesterday’s Financial Times. But Rice’s statement of US ambitions in an interview with the paper fell short of the desire for regime change in Tehran, the London-based business daily said.
The FT said, however, that Rice had signaled that Washington was determined to address an Iranian threat, describing it in similar terms to that formerly posed by Saddam Hussein’s toppled regime in Iraq. Rice told the paper that the White House wanted to see an elected government in Tehran which meets the demands of the Iranian people for “a regime which protects the rights of women, which is forward looking and modern.”
Washington has stepped up its criticism of Tehran’s Islamic regime in recent days and US media reports have said the White House is mulling its own campaign to undermine Iran’s clerical theocracy. However, Bush dismissed reports of a planned attack on Iran as “idle speculation” in a Russian television interview broadcast late Friday.
Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said in an interview published yesterday that Iran will resist US pressure, in particular over its nuclear research program. “The US do not want us to have access to civilian nuclear technology, but we have the right to take part in this progress,” he said in an interview with the German news magazine Der Spiegel due to appear tomorrow.
He denied Iran was seeking to acquire nuclear weapons, saying his country was cooperating with the International Atomic Energy Agency and was respecting the agreements it had signed. Tehran was not afraid that Washington could be hoping for a change of regime in the country. “We shall resist that pressure as well,” he said.
Kharrazi sharply rejected allegations by Washington that Iran was harboring Al-Qaeda operatives. Kharrazi said Tehran is not afraid of any US aims to try to topple the Iranian regime. “We will also resist this pressure from the United States,” he told Der Spiegel.
As to US claims that Iran was harboring Al-Qaeda members, Kharrazi was emphatic: “We have fought the organization, have arrested its members and sent them back home.” Kharrazi added that at the time, Tehran condemned the Sept. 11 attacks as “naked terrorism”. But all the same, the United States was “threatening and injuring us” and he accused Washington of not being “ripe for talks”.
The accusations by Washington about Iran intervening in events in postwar Iraq only showed the US “ignorance” about conditions in Baghdad. “The US soldiers are occupiers who have no business being in Iraq,” Kharrazi said, adding that “the United States only sees that things are not going in Iraq the way it wishes”.
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei yesterday called for Islamic countries to unite to face American rule in Iraq, state television reported. “The United States, like any other 19th century colonialist, is trying to impose an American governor in Iraq,” Khamenei was quoted as saying at a meeting with the Organization of the Islamic Conference chief, Abdolvahed Belkeziz.
