Some U.S. officials believe offering incentives will strengthen the international community's hand by providing a united front for punitive measures, such as U.N. sanctions, if the incentives do not work.
Rice said the negotiations would show whether Iran was ready to end suspicions that it is pursuing a nuclear bomb.
"We believe that the EU negotiations are leading in the right direction because what they are doing is they are confronting Iran with a choice about whether it is prepared to give the international community the kind of confidence it needs about Iranian activities," she said.
Bush said Washington was working with its European allies to ensure that "the negotiating strategy achieves the objective of pointing out where guilt needs to be as well as achieving the objective of no nuclear weapon."
At the end of the day, the Iranians will keep marching toward their nuclear bomb. The Europeans will shovel money at the Iranians so the Iranians will pretend to halt their progress toward the bomb. And we are going to help. Is there a serious expectation that after we pour money on the Iranian mullahs and they keep pursuing the bomb that the Europeans will join us in harsher measures? Heck no.
Lord help us. It's bad enough for us to let the Iranians build the bomb. Do we have to subsidize them, too?
