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Hadley: For next administration, 'the biggest challenge' is Iran

Monday, January 19, 2009 Free Headline Alerts

Outgoing National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley warned the next presidential administration that one of the major dangers in the coming months in the troubled Middle East is Iran.

“For the next administration, the biggest challenge in this region is Iran,” Hadley said in a speech to CSIS. “Negotiations with Iran, as some have proposed, without leverage on Iran will not produce a change in Iranian behavior or advance U.S. interests.”

Hadley said Bush administration efforts, along with those of other international partners, has given the administration of President-elect Barack Obama increased leverage on Iran.

“The issue is how the new team will use this leverage to produce a different Iranian policy on its nuclear program, terrorism and Middle East peace,” he said.

Critics of the Bush administration Iran policy have said that the decision by the State Department to seek the involvement of Britain, Germany and France in the Iran nuclear issue was a mistake and has weakened U.S. influence and power toward Iran, and allowed Tehran to continue its illegal uranium enrichment program.

That policy was the work of Nicholas Burns, a liberal State Department bureaucrat, and ultimately Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

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