By Thom Shanker
MANAMA, Bahrain: Defense Secretary Robert Gates declared Saturday that Iran is a grave threat to regional security, even without nuclear weapons, and called on Tehran to account for the full range of intelligence describing its support for terrorism and instability around the world.
Just days after Iran claimed political victory after a new U.S. intelligence assessment found that Tehran froze its nuclear program several years ago, Gates said in his keynote address to a privately sponsored regional security conference that Iran could restart those efforts at any time and must come clean on its efforts to build a nuclear bomb.
In a lively question period, Gates was asked whether Israel's nuclear program was a threat to the region. After a pause, he said, "No, I do not," and moved on to the next question.
He was pressed again on whether the United States had a double standard in organizing the world community to prevent Iran from going nuclear but not working to disarm Israel.
"Israel is not training terrorists to subvert its neighbors; it has not shipped weapons to a place like Iraq to kill thousands of civilians; it has not threatened to destroy any of its neighbors; it is not trying to destabilize the government of Lebanon," Gates said.
Israel's nuclear arsenal may be an open secret, but rarely a topic for official comment. Gates's statements were heard by the predominantly Arab audience as implicitly confirming its existence.
In comments to reassure Gulf partners that may fear U.S. isolationism after the Iraq war, Gates stressed Washington's commitment to the region, and he pressed for an area-wide missile defense system and increased cooperation on local waterways to counter terrorism, piracy, narcotics trafficking and smuggling.
But the most provocative section of his address was in mocking Iran's praise of a new U.S. National Intelligence Estimate as a "watershed" — the first time Tehran had accepted a conclusion of U.S. spy agencies. As the audience chuckled, Gates said that if Iran wanted to approve of the latest U.S. intelligence estimate, it should equally accept other assessments on its misbehavior.
"Since that government now acknowledges the quality of American intelligence assessments," Gates said, "I assume that it will also embrace as valid American intelligence assessments of its funding and training of militia groups in Iraq; its deployment of lethal weapons and technology to both Iraq and Afghanistan; its ongoing support of terrorist organizations like Hezbollah and Hamas that have murdered thousands of innocent civilians; and its continued research and development of medium-range ballistic missiles that are not particularly cost-effective unless equipped with warheads carrying weapons of mass destruction."
The National Intelligence Estimate concluded that Iran halted a secret nuclear arms program in 2003. The response from Tehran was to describe the report as a confession of a mistake by the United States.
In his speech, Gates chose words that showed him still a moderate on how to blunt Iranian behavior while remaining a hawk on the use of intelligence. He consistently says that diplomatic and economic pressures should be the first choice to halt Iranian nuclear ambitions and that military action should remain a last resort.
Gates's statements are softer than the words of President George W. Bush, who as recently as October invoked the possibility of a "World War III" to warn of the Iranian threat.
As would be expected of a former director of central intelligence, Gates said Iran "cannot pick and choose" only the U.S. intelligence it likes. He said the latest estimate "is explicit that Iran is keeping its options open and could re-start its nuclear weapons program at any time — I would add, if it has not done so already."
The speech captured the same tone of calibrated irony that Gates used in response to a caustic address delivered by President Vladimir Putin of Russia to a regional security conference in Munich in February. Yet Gates was blunt in his assessments of Iranian action to provoke violence and instability around the world.
"There can be little doubt that their destabilizing foreign policies are a threat to the interests of the United States, to the interests of every country in the Middle East, and to the interests of all countries within the range of the ballistic missiles Iran is developing," he said.
An Iranian delegation was invited to the conference, but organizers said no officials from Tehran were in attendance.
Gates encouraged Gulf nations to move beyond bilateral relations with the United States in countering Iran and offered as fertile areas of cooperation "shared early warning, cooperative air and missile defense and maritime security awareness." In particular, he urged allies to develop regional air and missile defense systems.
To underscore the importance of the conference, sponsored by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, based in London, the U.S. delegation this year included for the first time the defense secretary; the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen; and the senior commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, Admiral William Fallon.
"The United States remains committed to defending its vital interests and those of its allies in Iraq and in the wider Middle East," Gates said.
