Rice: Attacking Iran Is 'Not on Agenda'

Robin Wright, The Washington Post:

Despite tough new language on Iran, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday that a U.S. attack on the Tehran regime is "simply not on the agenda" for now. After talks Friday with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Rice said the United States and its allies still have "many diplomatic tools" that they will pursue "fully" to ensure that Iran's theocracy does not subvert its legal nuclear energy program to develop a nuclear weapon. ...

Rice said on Thursday that the United States would rebuff European efforts to bring it into negotiations with Iran aimed at preventing the Islamic state from developing nuclear weapons.

Flying to Europe, she told reporters that the United States was confronting the theocratic government in Tehran in "a variety of ways" with "a variety of different partners" to end its nuclear weapons ambitions, support for Islamic extremism, interference in Iraq and human rights violations. ...

[Rice continued:]

"What we support is that the Iranian people should have a chance to determine their own future, and right now, under this regime, they have no opportunity to determine their own future," Rice said. "They should be no different from the Palestinians, or the Iraqis, or the Afghans, or people around the world . . . who are determining their own future." ...

When pressed on whether Bush's statement meant a new policy on so-called regime change, Rice said, "Policy is that the United States in a variety of ways and with a variety of different partners is seeking to deal with the destabilizing effects of Iranian behavior -- Iranian behavior toward terrorism, Iranian behavior on nuclear weapons as well as nuclear power, Iranian behavior in trying to deal with Iraq in ways that are not transparent." ...

The media still is still ingoring the possibility that the US will unite with the EU on Iran over the issue of human rights, after the EU3/Iran negotiations fail. Condi's playbook is as I expected, thus far.