WASHINGTON - The United States is "not looking for an excuse to go to war with Iran," US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday.
"We are not, you know, for the umpteenth time, we are not looking for an excuse to go to war with Iran. We are not planning a war with Iran," he told reporters here.
The US administration has upped the pressure on Iran in recent weeks accusing it of fomenting sectarian unrest in Iraq and alleging Iranian-built weapons are being used by Iraqi insurgents against US troops there.
But the White House has struggled to counter mounting speculation that it is laying the ground for possible military action against Iran.
"We're sensitive to that skepticism," Gates told reporters at a press conference, but repeated an insistence by President George W. Bush on Wednesday that Iranian-built weapons were being used in Iraq.
"These are hard facts based on the technologies and the actual weapons themselves. I think that that evidence speaks for itself," Gates said.
"What we are trying to do is, inside Iraq, disrupt the networks that put these weapons in the hands of those who kill our troops. That's it."
Bush on Wednesday said suggestions that the US was manufacturing the allegations against Iran were "preposterous."
There was no doubt that the elite Al-Qods Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps was behind powerful, new improvised explosive devices (IEDS) killing US soldiers in Iraq, Bush said, vowing he would "do something about it."
But he backed off from earlier suggestions by US commanders in Baghdad that the attacks were being ordered by top Iranian leaders.
"Whether (Iranian President Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad ordered the Qods Force to do this, I don't think we know. But we do know that they're there," Bush said.
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