On March 9, 2006, Secretary of State Condoleezza “Rice, while not diminishing the importance of the level of violence in Iraq, said Iran might become an even bigger threat to national security. ‘We may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran,’ she said, describing that country’s leadership as ‘the central banker for terrorism,’ an oppressor of its own people, a fomenter of unrest in the Middle East and a would-be nuclear power.”
– Thom Shanker, “Iraqi Forces Would Handle Any Civil War, Rumsfeld Says,” The New York Times, March 10, 2006