Below is the article by Gareth Porter that preceded the one Chris
posted (NeoCons blocked nuke talks with Iran in 2003), suggesting that the
neocons failed in their primary mission.
Since Bush ‘cried Wolf’ on WMDs in Iraq and the link to al Qaeda didn’t
hold up to explain the Iraq insurgency, he is lately reduced to claiming it was
‘Saddam’s fault’.
Bush is having more credibility problems after this made headline news
this week:
Quoted! “One
of the keys is going to be to get a unity government up and running, a government
that reflects the diversity of the country. ... We want the Iraqis to make that
selection, of course. They are the ones who got elected by the people. They're
the ones who must form the government." - President Bush, 3/10/06
Except that: "Ambassador
Khalilzad said Mr. Bush 'doesn't want,
doesn't support, doesn't accept' Mr. Jaafari as the next prime
minister, according to Mr. Taki, a senior aide to Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, the head
of the Shiite bloc. It was the first 'clear and direct message' from the
Americans on a specific candidate for prime minister, Mr. Taki said." - New York Times, 3/29/06
Bush opposes Iraq’s PM, Shiites
report http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/29/international/middleeast/29iraq.html
We should assume that King George’s court is playing ‘good cop vs bad
cop’ with Iran and the UN, but they’ve left themselves very little margin for
error....they miss the point of their critics, both liberals and traditional
conservatives, that deposing a dictator under the guise of preemptive war has
exposed the imperialistic aims of the neocons in contrast to policies of
containment.
Visiting England today with FM Straw, Sec. of State Rice said, "I know we've made tactical errors, thousands of them
I'm sure," Rice told an audience gathered by the British
foreign policy think tank Chatham House. "But when you look back in
history, what will be judged will be, did you make the right strategic
decisions." She said she
remains firmly convinced that it was the right strategic decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq three years ago, and
that it required an invasion to do it. Saddam "wasn't going anywhere without military intervention,"
she said.
Meanwhile, an expert with a much better track record on WMDs urged calm
today on the Iranian nuke issue:
AlElbaradei says the
only solution to the Iran nuclear issue is a negotiated settlement UN atomic energy chief Mohamed ElBaradei urged the
international community Thursday to steer away from threats of sanctions
against Iran, saying the country's nuclear program was not "an
imminent threat"
and that the time had come to "lower the pitch" of debate.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iran31mar31,0,1743315.story?coll=la-home-headlines
POLITICS:
Iran, Iraq Crises Converge Despite U.S. Hardliners
Analysis
by Gareth Porter*, IPS, March 21, 2006
WASHINGTON - The agreement last week between
Washington and Iran to hold direct talks on Iraq has forged a new linkage between
the Iraq and Iran crises. Hardliners in the George W. Bush administration are
resisting any linkage between the two crises, because they want to avoid
pressure for a broader settlement with Iran. But they have already lost the battle against talks with
Iran on the stabilisation of Iraq. Those negotiations are likely to increase the pressure for
bilateral negotiations on Iran's nuclear programme and Iranian security
concerns.
The convergence of the two issues is being driven both by the need of the
United States and Iraqi political factions for Iranian help in resolving the
sectarian violence and political deadlock in Iraq, and by Iran's desire to
reach a broader settlement with Washington.
The U.S. reactions to the Iranian acceptance of talks on Iraq reveal a sharp
contrast in the attitudes of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other
administration officials toward the talks.
Before flying to Australia, Rice said the talks with Iran on Iraq "could
be useful". The following day, however, some administration officials
began to denigrate the value of those talks. White House National Security
Adviser Stephen J. Hadley said they were "simply a device by the Iranians
to try to divert pressure that they are feeling in New York". Hadley
suggested that there was no need for the United States to talk with Iran at
all, because, "We're talking to Iran all the time: We make statements,
they make statements."
The same day a "senior U.S. official", speaking to reporters while
demanding anonymity, called the Iranian offer of talks "a stunt" and
said Washington would participate only to avoid "criticisms that it did
not do all it can do to defuse bloody tensions in Iraq". And a White House
official sought out reporters to say the Iranian offer was "almost puffery".
The attacks by those associated with the administration's hard-line policy
toward Iran revealed sharp differences over which is more important --
isolating Iran diplomatically, or taking advantage of its influence within the
Shi'a political leadership in Iraq to help settle the crisis there.
The Dick Cheney-Donald Rumsfeld group, whose views were expressed by Hadley and
the anonymous officials minimising the importance of talks with Iran, clearly
care less about what happens in Iraq than they do about maintaining the policy
of implicit, if not explicit regime change in Tehran.
Rice and Khalilzad, however, are apparently willing to risk a weakening or
breach of the policy of isolating and threatening Iran, because they recognise
the desperation of the sectarian-political situation in Iraq and believe Iran
could help.
Since late last year,
Bush has sided with Rice and Khalilzad against Cheney and Rumsfeld, when they prevailed on Bush to
authorise talks with Iran on the Iraq crisis. In late December or early
January, Khalilzad dispatched a message to Iranian authorities proposing
cooperation on Iraq, according to the London-based Arab-language newspaper
Al-Hayat.
The Cheney-Rumsfeld group did not attack the decision then, because they were
confident that Iran would reject an invitation for discussions limited solely
to Iraq. Iran's foreign minister quickly confirmed that belief by declaring
that Iran would not agree to those terms.
Khalilzad has apparently repeated his proposal to Iran to discus the
stabilisation of Iraq more recently. According to a Mar. 12 article in the
London Sunday Times by Lindsey Hilsum, the international editor of London's
Channel 4 news, a senior Iranian intelligence official said that the U.S.
invitation of talks on Iraq had been "renewed" in late February.
This time, the Iranians did not reject the U.S. proposal. Their willingness to
help stabilise the situation in Iraq without any commitment to broader talks
reflects the increased perception in Tehran of a danger of military
confrontation with Washington.
Since the Iranian rejection of Khalilzad's earlier proposal for talks, the Bush
administration has stepped up its pressure on Tehran over the nuclear issue and
orchestrated a campaign to take the nuclear issue to the Security Council.
In agreeing to help the United States on Iraq, the Iranians are primarily
interested in the possibility of using talks on Iraq as a bridge to broader
diplomatic negotiations with Washington. The Iranian intelligence official told
Hilsum that Tehran would accept the U.S. offer for talks but wanted them to be
in a neutral country, hoping they would eventually lead to a dialogue on the
nuclear issue as well.
In announcing Tehran's acceptance of U.S. terms for the talks, Ali Larijani,
Iran's chief negotiator on its nuclear programme, who is known to be close to
the supreme leader of the regime, Ayatollah Ali Khameini, hinted at the desire
to reach an accommodation with Washington on nuclear and other issues.
"If the Americans stop their troublemaking in the region and if they
examine their previous conduct and behaviour, a lot of things may happen,"
he said.
The hardliners in Washington are determined to avoid just such negotiations on
Iran's nuclear programme. No sooner had the Iranian agreement to discuss Iraq
been made public on Mar. 16 than Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns
publicly ruled out any discussions with Iran on the nuclear issue.
He asserted that any such negotiations would be "futile in view of the
country's track record on the issue". But he also revealed that rejecting
negotiations on the nuclear enrichment is part of the administration's strategy
of pressure on Iran, referring to its "calculation that it is better to
isolate the Iranian regime."
Although the administration seeks to keep cooperation with Iran over the crisis
in Iraq separate from its strategy of isolation of Iran, the evolution of the
Iraq crisis may make such separation impossible. The discussions on Iraq will
have to involve various political formulas which the United States and Iran
could both support. Iran would be asked to help sell the militant Shiite
parties on a settlement plan with unpalatable compromises for those same
parties.
If the Iranians become more deeply involved in the internal negotiation in
Iraq, and the usefulness of their role becomes widely recognised, it will
certainly be more difficult for the United States to resist
political-diplomatic pressures to talk with Tehran about the larger issues
threatening the peace of the region -- Iran's nuclear programme and the U.S.
efforts to isolate and destabilise the regime.
Ironically, Iran's assistance in brokering a Shiite-Sunni political compromise
has been sought by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of SCIRI, the largest party
in the dominant Shiite alliance.
Sunni political leaders, meanwhile, have rejected the idea of U.S.-Iranian
talks on a settlement, despite the fact that the Iranian support is necessary
to get the Shiites to agree on key Sunni demands.
*Gareth
Porter is an historian and national security policy analyst. His latest book,
"Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in
Vietnam", was published in June 2005. (FIN/2006)
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=32577
Related
Bush was set on war,
memo to Blair shows http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/27/international/europe/27memo.html
Diplomacy must win to avoid confrontation,
says US The document cited other concerns about
Iran: that it sponsors
terrorism, threatens Israel, seeks to thwart Middle East peace, disrupts
democracy in Iraq and denies freedom to Iranians. It said these can only be resolved if
Iran makes the strategic decision to change its policies, open up its political
system and allow freedom.
"This is the ultimate goal of
U.S. policy," the document said. "In the interim, we will continue to take all
necessary measures to protect our national and economic security against the
adverse effects of their bad conduct."
The document sought to draw a line between Iran's leaders and the
Iranian people, saying "our strategy is to block the threats posed by the
regime while expanding our engagement and outreach to the people the regime is
oppressing."
http://go.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=K0OOZH4TFDUSKCRBAEZSFEY?type=topNews&storyID=11553906
Iran tells US allies it will escalate
crises if hit with sanctions
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/14107240.htm
Iran willing to talk directly to US about Iraq A
ranking Iranian national security official said Thursday that Iran is willing
to engage in direct talks with the United States about the political future of
Iraq. The comments in an interview
by Ali Larijani, general secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council,
marked a striking public shift by Iran toward direct engagement with
Washington.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/16/AR2006031600457.html
NeoCon Cabal
(Cheney-Rumsfeld) blocked 2003 US-Iran
negotiations: Powell’s former aide L. Wilkerson is
still talking
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HC30Ak01.html
Russia scathing on Iran’s nuclear diplomacy
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/13/AR2006031300445.html
Michael Flynn Can Iran
Debate bridge Continental Divide? What to do if the US can’t convince the rest of the
world to go along? Europe's willingness to
present a united front with the US on Iran is driven by a number of factors,
they say, including mounting concern for the U.S. predicament in Iraq, the
disappointing outcomes of its negotiations with Iran, and the fear that further
destabilisation in the Middle East will have serious consequences for European
security.
None of these factors, however, mean that Europe sees Iran
as an "enemy that must be vanquished" - or that it views Washington's
"war on terror" with anything less than scepticism. And solving the Iranian
crisis, say these observers, will likely hinge more on how far Washington is
willing to move toward a European position rather than vice versa.
Tim Guldimann, a former Swiss ambassador to Iran and
currently a professor at the Univ. of Frankfurt who coauthored a recent report
on the Iranian nuclear situation by the International Crisis Group (ICG),
argues that the best way out of the current impasse is to forge an
agreement that recognises an Iranian nuclear fuel programme as a fait accompli.
"For two and a half years now, Iran has been perfectly
clear about its intentions to have an enrichment programme. But the EU3
[Germany, France, and Great Britain] ignored this, arguing that offering
incentives and threatening sanctions would eventually get Iran to stop its
enrichment programme," he said. "Not surprisingly, the Iranians
rejected out of hand this approach when it was proposed by the Europeans last
August." Instead of insisting
that Iran relinquish enrichment, says Guldimann, negotiators should propose a
"delayed limited enrichment programme" as a potential compromise.
Ultimately, says Guldimann, what Iran seems
to be pushing for is not the bomb itself, but the capability to produce a bomb
if the need should arise. "The goal, which has not been officially
recognised, is to have the military option, but not a bomb," he said.
"The Iranians were attacked by Iraq with weapons of mass destructions,
600,000 died. When that happened they stood alone, without the support from
outside. That history is critical in Iranian considerations." http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=32484
