Fox News

Thursday, December 2, 2004

Special Report

With Brit Hume

BRIT HUME: Welcome to Washington. I’m Brit Hume. In Iran today some 200 masked young men and women gathered in a cemetery to pledge their willingness to carry out suicide bomb attacks against Americans in Iraq and Israelis. The increasing threat Iran poses to its neighbors and the world was also a leading topic in a conversation FOX News’s Bill O’Reilly had today with Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. FOX News pentagon correspondent, Bret Baier reports.

Bret Baier: In an exclusive interview with FOX’s Bill O’Rielly, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called Iran a “big problem” with its hidden nuclear program and its meddling throughout the region.

Donald Rumsfeld: The Iranians are making a lot of mistakes, let me just put it that way, and they are notably unhelpful in Afghanistan and they are notably unhelpful in Iraq.”

Bret Baier: Pressed about whether the US would allow Iran to become a nuclear power, Rumsfeld said in the face of Iran’s deceptions and denials the international community needs to step up.

Donald Rumsfeld: What one has to do at that stage is continue to put pressure on them and then it’s up to the countries of the United Nations to decide what kind of steps they may or may not want to take.

Bret Baier: This, as an Iranian opposition group is charging that Iran is producing a nuclear-capable long range missile that could travel twice the distance of its current missiles, giving Iran the ability to strike targets as far away as Berlin. The National Council of Resistance of Iran released these satellite images of military complexes near Tehran, where the group says the missile is being built in secret. Sites that have not been seen publicly before but have been the focus of US and Israeli intelligence agencies, according to US officials. The opposition group also says it has located a launch site for the missiles near the Iran-Iraq border. Experts who have analyzed the photos say there is reason for concern.

John Pike: We have seen similar facilities in North Korea. We have seen similar facilities in Pakistan. There, they are a part of those countries nuclear weapons programs, and when you see the same sort of facility in Iran, you have to conclude that it’s probably part of Iran’s nuclear weapons program as well.

Bret Baier: This comes just three days after the International Atomic Energy Agency gave its blessing to an agreement between Iran and three European countries, stating that Iran would suspend all of its nuclear ambitions in exchange for trade deals. But Iranian opposition leaders say there is no way for IAEA inspectors to be sure Iran is complying.

Alireza Jafarzadeh, Fox News Foreign Affairs Analyst: The present arrangement says that the IAEA can only inspect sites that are already declared by Iran as nuclear related sites, and it’s ironic, because none of the sites that are now known as nuclear related sites were actually declared by Iran itself, rather they were all exposed by the Iranian opposition.

Bret Baier: A spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry today called the accusations baseless, charging that opposition groups always fabricate stories. But at the State Department officials said if Iran really wanted to demonstrate to the world that it was not developing nuclear weapons, if it really had nothing to hide, the Iranian leadership would allow all sites to be inspected. Brit.

Brit Hume: Bret, thank you. You can see Bill O’Reilly’s exclusive interview with the Defense Secretary in its entirety tonight at eight o’clock Eastern Time.

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