Bush tries "Iran is evil" speech again

January 13, 2008

President Bush is beating the war drum again and asking America's allies to join the US in confronting Iran "before it's too late."

"Iran today is the world's leading state sponsor of terror," Bush said Sunday during a speech in the United Arab Emirates.

"The United States has no desire for territory. We seek our shared security in your liberty. We believe that stability can only come through a free and just Middle East where the extremists are marginalized," the president said.

Iran and the United States have recently engaged in verbal saber-rattling after an encounter last Sunday between three U.S. Navy ships and five Iranian speedboats in the Strait of Hormuz.

In Tehran, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammed Ali Hosseini dismissed Bush's approach to Iran as ineffective.

"During the past seven years, the Bush administration has followed a policy to isolate Iran and promote Iranophobia in the region," Hosseini said, according the official Islamic Republic News Agency. "All regional states adopted a vigilant approach regarding that policy and opposed it."

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