On CNN’s State of the Union this morning, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates addressed both the escalating situation in Iran — where recent revelations of a secret nuclear site and the testing of short-range missiles have raised tensions leading up to this week’s meetings with Iran — and the ongoing war in Afghanistan.
Gates said the U.S. has been watching Iran’s secret nuclear site for “at least a couple years” and that there is “no doubt that this is an illicit nuclear facility.”
“If they wanted it for peaceful purposes, there’s no reason to put it so deep underground, no reason to be deceptive about it,” Gates said.
So what can the U.S. do about it? Gates said there’s still “a pretty rich list” of sanction possibilities but that “the reality is there is no military option that does anything more than buy time.”
The only way you end up not having a nuclear capable Iran is for the Iranian government to decide that their security is diminished by having those weapons.
On Afghanistan — where top U.S. commander Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal wants more troops to try and turn around a worsening, unpopular war — Gates emphasized that he is “absolutely” confident in McChrystal, but stopped short of explicitly endorsing his call for tens of thousands of additional U.S. troops.
Gates also offered praise to President Obama, saying the President’s Afghanistan strategy is “the first real strategy we have had for Afghanistan since the early 1980s.”
That’s a surprising statement, especially since Gates served in the Bush administration. He explained that under Bush, “we were fighting a holding action” in Afghanistan.
“We were very deeply engaged in Iraq,” Gates said, adding that “we were too stretched to do more.”
Gates will also appear later this morning on This Week with George Stephanopoulos.
