Pat Dollard | Young Americans

The Swamp:
by Mark Silva

Vice President Dick Cheney acknowledges that it’s understandable that people might read planning for a war in Iran into his Middle East trip.

Asking Cheney, in Oman, if he can foresee any point where military action might be taken, the interviewer explained that she was asking this “because when you come over here, people in the region start thinking you’re over here to plan some sort of military action.”

“Well, I suppose that’s because of my past history,” Cheney replied.

“I’ve been pretty consistent over time about Iran,” Cheney said in his interview with ABC News’ Martha Raddatz at the opulent Shangri-La’s Barr Al Jissah Resort and Spa on the Gulf of Oman, across the water from Iran. “I don’t think I’ve ratcheted up the rhetoric. I felt strongly for a long time, and a lot of us have, that Iran should not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons.”

Cheney declined to comment on Adm. William Fallon, the Centcomm commander who has announced his retirement after Esquire magazine reported that Fallon was concerned about the administration ratcheting up war talk about Iran. “The admiral had many years of distinguished service in the United States Navy,” Cheney said. “I think he deserves our thanks for his service.”

But Cheney spoke at length about continuing concerns about Iran’s nuclear ambitions — which he considers both ongoing and unacceptable.

“I think the important thing to keep in mind is the objective that we share with many of our friends in the region, and that is that a nuclear-armed Iran would be very destabilizing for the entire area,” the vice president said, asked about the National Intelligence Estimate that said Iran had suspeded a nuclear-weapons building program four years before.

“It’s important if you’re going to look at the National (Intelligence) Estimate that we be precise in terms of what it says,” Cheney said. “And what it says is that they have definitely had in the past a program to develop a nuclear warhead; that it would appear that they stopped that weaponization process in 2003. We don’t know whether or not they’ve restarted.

“What we do know is that they had then, and have now, a process by which they’re trying to enrich uranium, which is the key obstacle they’ve got to overcome in order to have a nuclear weapon,” he said. “They’ve been working at it for years. They’ve now got a large number of centrifuges operating. We know this from the work of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

“I have high confidence they have an ongoing enrichment program,” Cheney said.

“I think it’s important, again, to be precise, in terms of what we’re talking about,” he said. “A nuclear weapons program involves really two categories of activity. One is developing fissile material, something that will blow up and give a nuclear yield. That process was ongoing before the NIE, it’s been ongoing since the NIE, it’s ongoing today. They are today running centrifuges to enrich uranium to produce a weapon.

“The second piece of it, then, is the actual design of the warhead itself, and the way in which you would detonate it, set it off. And they had a program dealing with that issue through 2003. That’s what the NIE says, and that they apparently stopped it in 2003.

“The NIE does not address the issue, can’t, in terms of whether or not that’s ever been restarted,” he said. “We do know the enrichment program continues, and that has been the focus of our diplomatic efforts; that’s what the United Nations Security Council is focused on. That’s what most of the nations in the region are concerned about, because it’s the hardest thing to do, is to create fissile material. So we’d like to see them stop that.”