Rice Critical of Iranian Leadership

Iran’s treatment of its citizens is loathsome, and they deserve better leaders than “unelected mullahs,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Thursday at the start of her first trip abroad since taking her new post.

She stopped short of demanding their ouster.

Rice also told reporters that last weekend’s election in Iraq vindicated the U.S.-led invasion to topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. The action was broadly unpopular in some of the European capitals Rice plans to visit during her weeklong trip.

Iraq’s election for a transitional national assembly reminds “us why we worked to liberate the Iraqi people from that terrible dictator,” Rice said.

As for Iran, she said, “I don’t think anybody thinks that the unelected mullahs who run that regime are a good thing for the Iranian people and for the region.

“I think that our European allies agree that the Iranian regime’s human rights behavior and its behavior toward its own population is something to be loathed,” Rice said.

Asked whether the United States supported a change of leadership in Iran, Rice said, “We are engaged in a process with many others that is aimed at making clear to the Iranians that their behavior internally and externally is out of step with the direction and desire of the international community.”

The United States has been cool to European efforts to negotiate a halt to suspected Iranian nuclear weapons development, preferring stiffer measures such as economic penalties.

Rice spoke en route to London, her first stop. Her itinerary includes visits to Jerusalem and the West Bank. A major goal of the trip is to encourage European leaders to focus on the possibility of Middle East peace and other mutual goals.

Rice planned to meet today with British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. She is scheduled to stop in Berlin later today and Paris next week.