TEHRAN - Iran said on Tuesday it felt vindicated by a U.S. intelligence finding that it was not building an atomic bomb, but George W. Bush said Tehran remained dangerous and international pressure should continue.
The National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) published on Monday took U.S. friends and foes by surprise after years of strident rhetoric from Washington accusing Tehran of pursuing a covert nuclear weapons programme.
Iran said the report supported its long-standing assertion that its nuclear programme had only peaceful civilian aims, such as electricity generation.
"It's natural that we welcome it when those countries who in the past have questions and ambiguities about this case ... now amend their views realistically," Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told state radio.
The report, which said Tehran had halted its nuclear weapons programme in 2003 but was continuing to develop the capacity to enrich uranium, had an immediate impact on moves under way to tighten U.N. sanctions against Tehran.
China, which has a U.N. Security Council veto and agreed only reluctantly to earlier sanctions, said the NIE created new conditions.
"I think we all start from the presumption that now things have changed," China's U.N. Ambassador Guangya Wang said.
France and Britain joined Bush in saying international pressure must be maintained on Iran. Israel, which believes a nuclear Iran could threaten its existence, questioned the report and urged continued pressure on Tehran.
At a news conference in Washington, Bush said the report should in fact be taken as a rallying point for further pressure on Iran and it showed that the approach had been successful in the past.
He said the NIE showed Iran was still developing nuclear technology and could restart a covert weapons programme.
"Iran was dangerous, Iran is dangerous and Iran will be dangerous if they have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon," Bush said.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who has spent years persuading other powers to join in anti-Iranian sanctions, told reporters travelling with her to Africa that she would continue to push for a third U.N. sanctions resolution.
