Bush: Iran Strike Plans 'Wild Speculation'

WASHINGTON – AP- President Bush said Monday that force is not necessarily required to stop Iran from having a nuclear weapon, and he dismissed reports of plans for a military attack against Tehran as "wild speculation."

Bush said his goal is to keep the Iranians from having the capability or the knowledge to have a nuclear weapon.

"I know we're here in Washington ... (where) prevention means force," Bush said. "It doesn't mean force necessarily. In this case it means diplomacy."

Bush, speaking Monday at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, and other administration officials have said repeatedly that the military option is on the table.

Earlier Monday, the White House sought to minimize speculation stoked by media reports over the weekend about a possible military strike against Iran while acknowledging that the Pentagon is conducting "normal military contingency planning" to deal with Tehran's nuclear ambitions.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan refused to confirm or deny a report in The New Yorker magazine that raised the possibility of using nuclear bombs against Iran's underground nuclear sites. "I'm not going to engage in all this wild speculation," McClellan told reporters.

"Those who are seeking to draw broad conclusions based on normal military contingency planning are misinformed or not knowledgeable about the administration's thinking," he said.

McClellan repeatedly stressed that the administration's focus is on working with other nations to come up with a diplomatic solution to get Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment program.

Bush counselor Dan Bartlett made a similar statement to The Associated Press on Sunday, saying "those who are drawing broad, definitive conclusions based on normal defense and intelligence planning are ill-informed and are not knowledgeable of the administration's thinking on Iran."

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, in an interview with the British Broadcasting Corp. on Sunday, called the idea of a nuclear strike "completely nuts."

Straw said Britain would not launch a pre-emptive strike on Iran and he was as "certain as he could be" that neither would the U.S. He said he has a high suspicion that Iran is developing a civil nuclear capability that in turn could be used for nuclear weapons, but there is "no smoking gun" to prove it and rationalize abandoning the plodding diplomatic process.

"The reason why we're opposed to military action is because it's an infinitely worse option and there's no justification for it," Straw said.