First Formal US-Iran Talks since 1980
The US has dealt differently with Iran than with any other of its major enemies. Then President Ronald Reagan spoke directly with Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev even though the USSR had thousands of nuclear missiles aimed at the US. The US talks to North Korea. It talks to Venezuela. It doesn't talk to Cuba, but then Cuba is a small weak country of 11 million. Iran is an oil state with a population of some 70 million.
Do the United States and Iran have things to talk about? Yes. They have several common interests, which could be stressed and developed fruitfully.
1. Shiite Iran is a deadly enemy of al-Qaeda and the Taliban, which the US is also fighting. Instead of making up silly charges against Iran, the US could explore avenues of cooperation against these enemies.
2. Shiite Iran is a deadly enemy of the Iraqi Baath Party and of the radical Salafi Jihadis who are responsible for most of the violence in Iraq and for most of the killings of US troops. There are ways in which the US and Iran could cooperate in defeating these forces, which are inimical to both Washington and Tehran.
3. Shiite Iran is happy with the Shiite led government of Iraq and wants to see Iraq's territorial integrity maintained. Supporting the al-Maliki government and keeping Iraq together are also goals of the United States.
It is not true, as Robert Kagan once alleged to me on the radio, that if something is in Iran's interest, it will do it anyway, so that talks are useless. It is often the case that countries, like individuals, cut off their noses to spite their faces. Effective diplomacy can often lead a country to see the advantages of cooperation on some issues, so that its leaders stop sulking and actually turn to accomplishing something.
The way in which fighting the Salafi Jihadis and al-Qaeda can unite otherwise contentious forces is visible in Lebanon, where Nasrallah's [Shiite] Hizbullah supported the Seniora government's fight against [the radical Sunni] Fatah al-Islam. The leader of the latter had been close to the notorious Shiite-killer, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Iran is not foredoomed to be a rejectionist state. It offered to initiate talks that could have led to a comprehensive peace with the US and Israel in early 2003. The US tossed away that opportunity, which won't come back as long as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is president (at least until 2009).
So let us hope it won't toss away more opportunities, and that Supreme Jurisprudent Ali Khamenei and Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani can reign in the hardliners around Ahmadinejad enough to reduce tensions.
Howard LaFranchi at the Christian Science Monitor reports on Monday's historic talks between the US and Iran in Baghdad.
I am quoted:
' "The talks would not be taking place unless Bush backed them and ... Khamenei backed them," says Juan Cole, an expert on Iraq and Shiite movements at the University of Michigan. "[President Bush] is to the point where he will try anything," he adds, but "it also points to the increased influence of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice" and the administration's new Iraq team: Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and his man in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, and Crocker, who recently arrived from Pakistan. '
and here:
' "The US-Iran talks are deeply unpopular among some elements in Washington and Tehran," says Mr. Cole. "The Cheney camp is reported to be opposed to them, and the arrests [in Iran] of Iranian-American academics in recent days may well be an attempt by some in the camp of [President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad to sabotage these talks." '
I wasn't so much referring to the case of Haleh Esfandiari, which goes back to December, though she was only recently put in Evin Prison, but of sociologist Kian Tajbakhsh. Patrick Seale lays out all the reasons for pessimism about the progress these bilateral US/Iran talks on Iraqi security will make.
Labels: Iran
posted by Juan Cole @ 5/29/2007 12:32:00 AM
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The 2003 Iranian offer for re engagement with the West could have offered recognition of Israel the same way the Saudi proposal offers recognition of Israel - either the refugees have to return or an accommodation would have to be reached that the Palestinians (including the refugees) are willing to vote for.
Iran was offering to play a role more like Saudi Arabia's. At the time, the Saudis would accommodate US/Israeli requests to do things like decrease money transfers to radical Palestinians (less so now) but there was no realistic chance of recognition in the foreseeable future.
Iran also has elections and its politicians are not as insulated from its voters as is the case in Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. So even playing the role of Saudi Arabia would have been hard for Iran. Iran would have gone to the very limit of what was permissible under any arrangement with the US.
Westerners tend to underestimate the degree to which non-acceptance of Israel and support for Palestinians, including Palestinians who do not accept Israel, is part of mainstream reasoned political thought in almost all of the Muslim world.
Most Westerners are of the opinion that there should be a Jewish state, even at the expense of refugees never returning. But most Westerners are unaware that this opinion is not in some way the objective truth and that it is possible for reasonable people to hold the opposite opinion.
The inability to accept the mainstream Muslim position as reasonable causes big distortions in Western policy regarding the Middle East.
It is hard to figure out what U.S. policy actually is. A recent piece by Seymour Hersh called the Redirection talked about an all out push against Iran, and mentioned, as reported on Democracy Now about a week ago:
Last March, (Seymour) Hersh reported the U.S. and Saudi governments are covertly backing militant Sunni groups like Fatah al-Islam as part of an overarching foreign policy against Iran and growing Shia influence.
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/24/143208
If the U.S. is backing Salafi terrorist groups like this (the folks at Nahr al-Bared in Lebanon), and they are anathema to Iran, what chance is there of raprochement with Iran?
How many Americans even know that the U.S. is sponsoring terrorist groups like Fatah al-Islam?
Talks are just that: talks. Their aim seems to be to create the impression that the problems of the USA in Iraq are caused by Iran, and not the result of the illegal invasion of Iraq by the USA, followed by a long and disastrous occupation.
The Americans pretend to be the ones who try to keep order in Iraq, while the Iranians do their utmost - according to US spin, that is - to make life miserable for Iraqi's and Americans alike. But the good Samaritans, the Americans I mean, really tried everything to stop the evil Iranians meddling in Iraqi affairs (which, of course, the Americans would never do!). They even held talks!
Alas, the Iranians won't listen, so in the end, when all is said and done, the Americans won't have any option but to bomb the bastards.
So that's what these talks might be: part of the American campaign to prepare the world for their attack on Iran.
Talking is cheap, and an additional advantage is that it keeps the attention away from what the Americans are doing in Iraq.
If I were Bush, and I wanted to bomb Iran, I would hold talks too.
what do you think of http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/002145.php
May 24, 2007
Cheney Attempting to Constrain Bush's Choices on Iran Conflict: Staff Engaged in Insubordination Against President Bush
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There is a race currently underway between different flanks of the administration to determine the future course of US-Iran policy.
On one flank are the diplomats, and on the other is Vice President Cheney's team and acolytes -- who populate quite a wide swath throughout the American national security bureaucracy.
The Pentagon and the intelligence establishment are providing support to add muscle and nuance to the diplomatic effort led by Condi Rice, her deputy John Negroponte, Under Secretary of State R. Nicholas Burns, and Legal Adviser John Bellinger. The support that Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and CIA Director Michael Hayden are providing Rice's efforts are a complete, 180 degree contrast to the dysfunction that characterized relations between these institutions before the recent reshuffle of top personnel.
However, the Department of Defense and national intelligence sector are also preparing for hot conflict. They believe that they need to in order to convince Iran's various power centers that the military option does exist.
But this is worrisome. The person in the Bush administration who most wants a hot conflict with Iran is Vice President Cheney. The person in Iran who most wants a conflict is Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Iran's Revolutionary Guard Quds Force would be big winners in a conflict as well -- as the political support that both have inside Iran has been flagging.
Multiple sources have reported that a senior aide on Vice President Cheney's national security team has been meeting with policy hands of the American Enterprise Institute, one other think tank, and more than one national security consulting house and explicitly stating that Vice President Cheney does not support President Bush's tack towards Condoleezza Rice's diplomatic efforts and fears that the President is taking diplomacy with Iran too seriously.
This White House official has stated to several Washington insiders that Cheney is planning to deploy an "end run strategy" around the President if he and his team lose the policy argument.
The thinking on Cheney's team is to collude with Israel, nudging Israel at some key moment in the ongoing standoff between Iran's nuclear activities and international frustration over this to mount a small-scale conventional strike against Natanz using cruise missiles (i.e., not ballistic missiles).
This strategy would sidestep controversies over bomber aircraft and overflight rights over other Middle East nations and could be expected to trigger a sufficient Iranian counter-strike against US forces in the Gulf -- which just became significantly larger -- as to compel Bush to forgo the diplomatic track that the administration realists are advocating and engage in another war.
There are many other components of the complex game plan that this Cheney official has been kicking around Washington. The official has offered this commentary to senior staff at AEI and in lunch and dinner gatherings which were to be considered strictly off-the-record, but there can be little doubt that the official actually hopes that hawkish conservatives and neoconservatives share this information and then rally to this point of view. This official is beating the brush and doing what Joshua Muravchik has previously suggested -- which is to help establish the policy and political pathway to bombing Iran.
The zinger of this information is the admission by this Cheney aide that Cheney himself is frustrated with President Bush and believes, much like Richard Perle, that Bush is making a disastrous mistake by aligning himself with the policy course that Condoleezza Rice, Bob Gates, Michael Hayden and McConnell have sculpted.
According to this official, Cheney believes that Bush can not be counted on to make the "right decision" when it comes to dealing with Iran and thus Cheney believes that he must tie the President's hands.
On Tuesday evening, i spoke with a former top national intelligence official in this Bush administration who told me that what I was investigating and planned to report on regarding Cheney and the commentary of his aide was "potentially criminal insubordination" against the President. I don't believe that the White House would take official action against Cheney for this agenda-mongering around Washington -- but I do believe that the White House must either shut Cheney and his team down and give them all garden view offices so that they can spend their days staring out their windows with not much to do or expect some to begin to think that Bush has no control over his Vice President.
It is not that Cheney wants to bomb Iran and Bush doesn't, it is that Cheney is saying that Bush is making a mistake and thus needs to have the choices before him narrowed.
-- Steve Clemons
I am unsure about point 3. and whether Shiite Iran could really be happy with a Shiite led government in Iraq.
This situation could only really be true if Ayatolla Sistani and like minded senior clerics were removed from their key positions of influence over the Shia worldwide in Najaf.
While the philosophical position of Sistani regarding the relationship between religion and the state remains the status quo, the religious leaders in Iran will have no real desire in allowing a Shiite Iraq flourish.
In the past Iran was in fact rather comfortable with its religious status as the heart of Shiisme while Saddam was suppressing and controlling Sistani in Iraq.
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