President must deal with Iranian threat.(Main)

Byline: SUSAN E. RICE

Has President Bush quietly concluded that the United States can live with a nuclear-armed Iran?

If this seems preposterous, recall the President's words at his year-end news conference. Asked about U.S. policy toward Iran, he said: "We're relying upon others, because we've sanctioned ourselves out of influence with Iran ... in other words, we don't have much leverage with the Iranians right now."

This bizarre statement obviously does not portend the President's born-again conversion to multilateralism. Rather, it is a false assessment of U.S. influence and a potentially deadly recipe for U.S. acquiescence to a nuclear Iran.

Consider what's at stake. Oil-rich Iran is arguably the world's most active state sponsor of terrorism. Iran was behind the 1996 …