March 1, 2009 – New York – AJC urged the international community to redouble its efforts to confront Iran's nuclear program after Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, stated his belief that the Tehran regime has amassed enough uranium for a nuclear weapon.

"Admiral Mullen says that an Iranian nuclear weapon is ‘a very, very bad outcome for the region and for the world.’ He is absolutely right," said AJC Executive Director David A. Harris. "A nuclear Iran presents a grave, perhaps catastrophic, threat to the Middle East and beyond."

"While we welcome the international consensus that Iran must not be allowed to develop a nuclear arsenal, as reflected in numerous UN Security Council resolutions, the window of opportunity to prevent this from happening is closing fast," said Harris. "All measures, and, in the first place, tougher and more targeted sanctions by leading countries, need to be examined. We must not wake up one morning and find ourselves in a new era where Iran has the bomb and the means to deliver it; the world's principal energy route, the Straits of Hormuz, is subject to Iranian blackmail; Iranian terrorist proxies, including Hamas and Hezbollah, seek a "dirty bomb"; and Iran's neighbors rush to embark on their own nuclear programs to confront the Iranian threat."

Admiral Mullen made his comments during an interview broadcast on CNN earlier today. His assessment follows a recent report by the International Atomic Energy Agency that Iran had understated by one third the amount of uranium it has enriched.