24th
August
2006
Stuff you wish you didn’t know
posted by saurabh in Bad People, Global Machinations, Persia |I’m only three years late discovering this - maybe I heard it before and it slipped my memory. Yes, yes, that will do nicely.
Anyway, it was a bit about Iran offering a fairly comprehensive negotiation with the U.S., including ending support for armed groups, recognizing the state of Israel, and accepting much tighter IAEA controls, in exchange for access to “peaceful nuclear technology”, normalization of the relationship between the U.S. and Iran, and a two-state solution for Palestine. Some more detail is here, including the incredible U.S. response:
But in 2003, Bush refused to allow any response to the Iranian offer to negotiate an agreement that would have accepted the existence of Israel. Flynt Leverett, then the senior specialist on the Middle East on the National Security Council staff, recalled in an interview with IPS that it was “literally a few days” between the receipt of the Iranian proposal and the dispatch of a message to the Swiss ambassador expressing displeasure that he had forwarded it to Washington.
Astounding. I think my blood is actually boiling - steam is coming out of my ears.
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I hate to be an old foreign policy fogey, but you find this pretty much uniformly in recent U.S. history. Look at any war, crisis, etc. of the past fifty years, and you’ll generally find we were offered whatever it was we supposedly wanted. And then we ignored the offer, because what we wanted wasn’t what we said. What would anomalous re Iran is if this hadn’t happened.
Posted by Jon
Sure, this is par for the course, but that doesn’t make it any less aggravating. You’d think there’d be some sort of infuriation fatigue that would kick in after a while, but this level of cosmic stupidity/evil doesn’t seem to get any easier to stomach.
Posted by saurabh
Although I am of the firm opinion that bush is an idiot…Iran is not to be trusted..what makes you think that Iran or any middle eastern country for that matter of fact can ever be good friends with israel?
Posted by nikhil fotedar
Countries don’t have good friends, nor are they to be trusted. Still, mightn’t it be better to pursue mutual interests, rather than mutual destruction?
Posted by hedgehog
what makes you think that Iran or any middle eastern country for that matter of fact can ever be good friends with israel?
As I am fond of pointing out till the cows come home, Jordan does an amazingly good job of trying, especially considering that it is actually home to more former Palestinians than most of the so-called champions of Palestine. Former, because unlike those other champions, Jordan has actually given many of them citizenship. Jordan and Israel cooperate on all kinds of trade, academic, and even security projects.
Posted by Saheli
Iran is not to be trusted..what makes you think that Iran or any middle eastern country for that matter of fact can ever be good friends with israel?
Well maybe if they had reached a deal, khatami’s successor would have been a reformer and we wouldn’t be dealing with 16 page letters advocating a mutual interest in theocracy and invasion plans (among other things).
But I forgot…other countries aren’t allowed to have domestic politics.
Posted by saurav