Senator Joseph I. Lieberman (Connecticut) told the annual Munich Conference on Security Policy on Saturday, The stability and well-being of both the EU and the U.S. are threatened by Iran’s program to develop nuclear weapons.
Lieberman said that the EU3 Britain, France, and Germany had spent two years engaging with Tehran to find a diplomatic solution to the international standoff. Unfortunately, the government of Iran has responded by reneging on multiple treaty obligations and other pledges, and continuing to push forward with their nuclear program.
The Democratic Senator described radical Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the most recent and extreme example of the small, fanatical, corrupt leadership in Iran.
Referring to remarks by Ahmadinejad who described the Holocaust as a myth and threatened that Israel had to be wiped off the map, he said, History teaches us this crucial lesson: that sometimes people advocating hate and violence do exactly what they say they are going to do. The evidence of this is as varied as the writings of Hitler in the thirties and the polemics of bin Laden in the nineties. So we must take Ahmadinejad’s statements literally and seriously. We have seen this chilling pattern of extremist statements, disingenuous negotiations, preparation for aggression, and repudiation of international commitments followed by war before. Let us not deceive ourselves into letting it happen again.
He added that the international community would regret ignoring threats posed by Tehran and carrying out endless and hopeless negotiations with it. Given the recent agreement among the five permanent members of the UN Security Council that Iran will be “reported” to that body, I urge our respective governments to pursue vigorous measures under UN auspices to induce Tehran to abandon its aspiration for a nuclear arsenal.
Lieberman called for sanctions to be enforced against the Islamic Republic if it did not heed the call by the United Nations to abandon its nuclear activities.
Lieberman said that NATO should be activated to respond to the challenge of the development of nuclear weapons by Iran.
I suggest that NATO begin to plan now how its military assets might be employed to enforce our shared goal to stop Iran’s military nuclear program. For example, NATO can conduct surveillance and interdiction activities that are sufficiently intense and enduring to secure an economic or political blockade and defend against Iran’s potential reaction to it.
We must support more energetic assistance to pro-democracy dissidents inside of Iran, and the dedication of far more resources for broadcast and electronic outreach to the Iranian people, who by all accounts, remain alienated from the fanatical clique that rules them, he added.
