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February 27, 2007

Iran Negotiation Offer in 2003 Ignored

Truthout today exposes how a negotiation offer from Iran was ignored in 2003. Iran offered to work out a compromise with the U.S. on its nuclear program and Mid-East peace efforts. The Bush administration, however, chose to ignore the offer. This according to Trita Parsi, a former aide to Rep. Bob Ney, and now the President of the National Iranian American Council and has written a book "Treacherous Triangle - The Secret Dealings of Iran, Israel and the United States." Parsi says Rep. Ney was personally handed the proposal, which he then hand-delivered to Karl Rove.

In a recent interview with Amy Goodman, Parsi explained:

Well, this is back in May 2003. The United States had just defeated Saddam in less than three weeks, and I think there were a lot of feelings inside Iran that they needed to present some sort of a negotiation deal with the United States. But what they presented was quite similar to many things that they had communicated verbally to the United States over the last couple of years. Basically, they said the United States has a couple of aims, Iran has a couple of aims, and there is a process to be able to proceed with the negotiations.

And what the Iranians agreed to discuss as a framework of the negotiations was how to disarm the Hezbollah, how to end support to Hamas and Islamic Jihad, how to open up the nuclear program, how to help the United States stabilize Iraq, and, in short, that the government there would not along sectarian lines, and also how to sign onto the Beirut Declaration, which is basically a former recognition of the two-state solution. These are far-reaching compromises that Iran potentially would have agreed to in the negotiations, but the Bush administration, as you reported, decided simply not to respond to the proposal.

Parsi believes that Condoleeza Rice is now claiming never to have seen this offer from Iran because:

… the Bush administration senses that it may be forced to negotiate with Iran down the road, particularly if this surge policy is a failure, which a lot of people predict that it will be. And as a result, they don't want the negotiations, the potential future negotiations, with Iran to be compared to what they could have achieved with Iran back in 2003, because clearly the United States is in a much weaker position today than it was back then. And I think it would look bad for the administration to come to a deal with Iran now that would be substantially worse than the deal they could have achieved back in 2003.

Parsi claims that Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld were the primary forces in the decision not to negotiate with Iran at the time and that the two went so far as to reprimand the Swiss ambassador who had delivered the offer to Rep. Ney. Parsi's 2004 trip to Iran led him to believe that the Bush Administration's lack of response to their offer left Iran feeling that the U.S. did not so much have a problem with Iran's policies as it did with Iran's power. He says Iran's leadership has come to believe that it is pointless to offer concessions to the Bush administration, and as a result, "Iran's position has strengthened and hardened."

Parsi also had some interesting things to say about the sincerity of our efforts against al-Qaeda:

[O]ne of the elements that I think we've seen very clear evidence for is this shift in the US's policy in the Middle East, in which it is now increasingly siding with the Sunni states and even turning a blind eye to their extensive support for al-Qaeda and jihadist groups, including in Iraq, groups that are killing Americans far more than the Shiites are, and pursuing that, not in order to stabilize Iraq, but in order to weaken Iran and re-establish the type of balance in the region that they feel is more beneficial to the United States, but is also the same balance that has been creating a war in the Middle East every five to ten years over the last fifty years.

In his newest article, Seymour Hersh writes that the Bush Administration and Saudi Arabia are conducting covert operations to strengthen the Sunni and weaken the Shias, and that some of the money is going to groups with ties to al-Qaeda. Parsi says this demonstrates that "the United States is not trying to resolve the civil war in Iraq. Rather, it's taking sides in the civil war. And ironically, it's taking the same side as al-Qaeda is doing."

From what I hear Hersh saying, and what Parsi is saying, it appears to me that the Bush Administration is not nearly as "incompetent" in Iraq as it would like us to believe. Rather, it appears we are intentionally stirring things up over there for our own benefit, inciting a civil war and egging Iran on so that we can attack them. Flynt Leverett, a former Bush Administration National Security Council official, seems to agree. He told Hersh, “This is all part of the campaign of provocative steps to increase the pressure on Iran. The idea is that at some point the Iranians will respond and then the Administration will have an open door to strike at them.”

Posted by Becky at February 27, 2007 10:59 AM