Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's statement that Iran has successfully enriched uranium for the first time has only underscored the international community's "serious concerns", the United States has said and made it known that it will be consulting the others in the Security Council on the next course of action.
Briefing newspersons aboard Air Force One on the way to Missouri, the White House Spokesman Scott McClellan took a pretty grim view of the statement of Ahmadnejad, but was careful in not making any rushed statement on the issue of economic sanctions and the Security Council.
"I think it only further underscores why the international community has serious concerns about the regime's nuclear ambitions. This is a regime that needs to be building confidence with the international community. Instead, they're moving in the wrong direction.
"This is a regime that has a long history of hiding its nuclear activities from the international community, and refusing to comply with its international obligations," he said.
Defiant statements and actions only further isolate the regime from the rest of the world, and further isolate the Iranian people," he said.
The spokesman was also non-committal in the kind of response of the United States or if Washington was planning to take any "additional" action.
"The reason the international community is concerned about their nuclear programme is because of their history of hiding its activities. It is concerned about the regime developing nuclear weapons or a nuclear weapons capability under the cover of a civilian programme. And that's why the international community has joined together and called on the regime to take specific steps to build confidence that its nuclear program is solely for peaceful purposes," McClellan replied.
In the context of the latest statement out of Teheran would the Bush administration go to the United Nations Security Council for sanctions, McClellan was asked.
"The presidential statement gave the regime 30 days to come clean and make a commitment to comply with its obligations. And if the regime continues to move in the direction it is currently, then we will be talking about the way forward with the other members of the Security Council and Germany about how to address this going forward. I think I've said before and we've said before that we'll continue to talk with members of the Security Council and Germany about next steps if the regime refuses to change its behaviour," McClellan said.
Pressed on the subject of sanctions, McClellan said: "We'll talk with the rest of the Security Council members and others about the next steps. Right now the regime has been given an opportunity to commit to complying with its obligations. And the most recent statements from the regime only further isolate itself and continue to show that it is moving in the wrong direction."
Read all about the Iran nuclear issue here.
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