Missed opportunity on negotiating with Iran

Gareth Porter reports on the missed opportunity in 2003 to negotiate with Iran over their nuclear program:  Neo-con cabal blocked 2003 nuclear talks  Asia Times/Inter Press Services 03/30/06.  He describes the Iranian offer:

The Iranian negotiating offer, transmitted to the State Department in early May 2003 by the Swiss ambassador in Tehran, acknowledged that Iran would have to address US concerns about its nuclear program, although it made no specific concession in advance of the talks, according to Flynt Leverett, then the National Security Council's senior director for Middle East Affairs.

Iran's offer also raised the possibility of cutting off Iran's support for Hamas and Islamic Jihad and converting Hezbollah into a purely socio-political organization, according to Leverett. That was an explicit response to Powell's demand in late March that Iran "end its support for terrorism".

In return, Leverett recalls, the Iranians wanted the US to address security questions, the lifting of economic sanctions and normalization of relations, including support for Iran's integration into the global economic order.

Leverett also recalls that the Iranian offer was drafted with the blessing of all the major political players in the Iranian regime, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khomeini.

Not only could this have led to greater progress on the Iranian nuclear issue.  But it could have moved things forward in the effort to get Iran to help the US stabilize Iraq.

And why sholdn't they?  The Shi'a government in Iraq is an ally of Iran.  Iran would presumably prefer a stable government that actually controlled the country to a disintegrating Iraq with a bloody and escalating civil war.

But the Bush administration just passed up the chance.  Steve Clemons (America's Botched 2003 Iran Diplomacy: No Talks with Evil People in the "Axis" Washington Note blog 03/30/06) says in commenting on Porter's article:

In corners of the Pentagon, CIA, State Department and National Security Agency - as well as in the Office of the President and Vice President, employees of our government - supported by taxpayers - are considering bombing and other hard shock scenarios to preempt Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons. The truth is that we should always have back up plans, hard and soft scenarios, diplomacy backed by resolve ... all of that.

But it's a real travesty when diplomacy is never really attempted -- and when the force that Cheney's wing of the foreign policy establishment wants applied actually wrecks American objectives, undermines our goals and interests, and frequently gives the thugs that we are trying to confront the legitimacy they need to grow stronger.