Threats to invade Iran by the United States and other countries appear to be "just words," but they unnecessarily raise tensions and fuel the arms race, said Cardinal Renato Martino.The cardinal, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, spoke about war and threats of war during a Dec. 11 press conference to present Pope Benedict XVI's message for the Jan. 1 celebration of World Peace Day.
Asked if the pope's remarks about increasing tensions among countries and about concerns over more nations possessing nuclear weapons referred specifically to Iran, the cardinal said, "they refer to what is on the table," which includes Iran.
However, he said, "all of these threats of war, of invasion" to stop what was perceived as Iran's efforts to build a nuclear bomb "were just words."
"Now it has been discovered that there are no weapons of mass destruction, a bit like what happened in Iraq," he said. "No one ever discovered the weapons of mass destruction" that the United States and its allies said Iraq had under Saddam Hussein.
"Here, too, the data say that since 2003 Iran has stopped all research aimed at the production of these arms," Cardinal Martino said.
The cardinal was referring to the Dec. 5 release of a U.S. National Intelligence Estimate saying the U.S. government intelligence agencies had "high confidence" that Iran ended its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and that they had "moderate confidence" that the program has not been restarted.
However, Cardinal Martino said, the threats of invading Iran "harm the international atmosphere because they can lead to concern and, in turn, to reinforcing security with the production of new weapons and the experimentation of new weapons."
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