US President George W. Bush has warned of the danger posed by a nuclear-armed Iran but dismissed talk of a likely US attack on Iran as "noise" from his critics.
The comments came after the Pentagon said a US military buildup in the Gulf represented a message to "potential adversaries" in the region, and Bush himself has vowed to crush any Iranian networks fueling violence that claims the lives of US soldiers in Iraq.
"I guess my reaction to all the noise about, you know, 'he wants to go to war,' is -- first of all I don't understand the tactics, and I guess I would say it's political," Bush told CSPAN television in an interview Tuesday.
"On the other hand, I hope that the members of Congress, particularly in the opposition party, understand the great danger of Iran having a nuclear weapon," the US president said.
Referring to the nuclear dispute, Bush said he had "a comprehensive policy aimed to solve this peacefully" and vowed to "press hard" for Iran to freeze sensitive nuclear work that could be a key step towards an atomic arsenal.
Tehran has rejected charges of smuggling bombs to insurgents who target US troops as "without foundation," and has repeatedly denied Washington's allegations that its nuclear program hides a quest for an atomic bomb.
The White House, its credibility tarnished by the flawed case for invading Iraq, vouched for charges that Iranians had been arming insurgents in Iraq with deadly bombs with the knowledge of the government in Tehran. It denied however that this will likely result in US military action.
"I don't think there's a change of tone on our part," said spokesman Tony Snow. "I think that there have been attempts, with all due respect, in the press to try to whip this up -- 'is the administration going after Iran?'"
"I'm glad you raised it again, because we're not," said Snow.
Snow was asked to give proof that Tehran knew about the bomb shipments.
"There's not a whole lot of freelancing in the Iranian government, especially when it comes to something like that," he said. "To counter that position, you would have to assume that people were able of putting together sophisticated weaponry, moving it across a border into a theater of war and doing so unbeknownst and unbidden."
Snow declined to offer more details, referring reporters to the Pentagon. When asked whether the US military had provided him details of the case against Iran, he replied: "I didn't get briefed on it."
His comments came one day after top US military officials in Baghdad said that sophisticated Iranian-built bombs smuggled into Iraq have killed at least 170 US and allied soldiers since June 2004 and wounded 620 more.
Three officials with the US-led coalition met foreign and Iraqi journalists to point the finger at the Al-Qods brigade of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Tehran's elite forces.
They spoke on condition of anonymity and cameras and recording devices were barred from the briefing, at which an array of mortar shells and booby traps were laid out for inspection.
Opposition Democrats and even some of Bush's Republicans have criticized the administration for its tough talk on Iran, warning that they hear echoes of the flawed case for the March 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq.
"I look at this with a degree of skepticism, based on the record that these intelligence operations have provided us in the past," said Christopher Dodd, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who has expressed an interest in running for president in 2008.
Dodd told CBS television Sunday he had no doubt that Iran played a role in the current unrest in Iraq but believed the issue should be resolved through diplomacy.
"It seems to me until we engage them in some way on a multiple of issues, including this one, it's only going to get worse," Dodd said.
Senator and former Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry said the administration's charges of Iranian meddling will be met by "a skeptical congress, and appropriately so, because of the last experience with Iraq."
The Bush administration, still smarting from the now-discredited charges that Saddam Hussein's Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, has struggled with how to back up its allegations against Iran.
After promising for weeks to reveal evidence underpinning its allegations that Tehran had been arming Iraqi insurgents, the White House scrapped a briefing almost at the last minute.
"The truth is, quite frankly, we thought the briefing overstated. And we sent it back to get it narrowed and focused on the facts," Bush's national security adviser Stephen Hadley said February 2.
US President George W. Bush has warned of the danger posed by a nuclear-armed Iran but dismissed talk of a likely US attack on Iran as "noise" from his critics.