May 28, 2006

Persian Pretexts - Safe For Go

Iran offered in 2003 to accept peace with Israel and cut off material assistance to Palestinian armed groups and to pressure them to halt terrorist attacks within Israel's 1967 borders, according to a secret Iranian proposal to the United States.

The Iranian proposal also offered to accept much tighter controls by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in exchange for "full access to peaceful nuclear technology". It offered "full cooperation with IAEA based on Iranian adoption of all relevant instruments (93+2 and all further IAEA protocols)".

[I]n 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 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. Asia Times Online

2 comments:

DrewL said...

Of course, we'll probably never see this story hit the U.S. press because it's not part of the Bush administration's propaganda machine. How pathetic!

Clearly, as we know all too well, the neo-con/PNACers have no intention of striking a deal with Iran, nor does Israel. They will be satisfied with nothing less than the destruction and/or overthrow of the current Iranian government, including Ahmadinejad and the mullahs.

Diplomacy? Bah! The Bushies know nothing about it. Unless it comes through the barrel of a gun. Or a stealth bomber.

M1 said...

Hi DrewL.

So we're hearing that San Diego's been brimming with all sorts of specialized submarine exercises tailored to an Iranian campaign. The Iranians have a few of those pesky diesel generated subs (like the N. Koreans) and they are bastards to catch and track for our, relatively speaking, noisy boats. So we gotta learn to deal with 'em before we can hope to control oil transits etc through the Strait while protecting our floating assets. Sneaky Persian wolfpacks would be devestating. And we've been exercising like hell, and dat for singular purpose. I think the bludgeon is still on the table - and never was elsewhere.

We've been fighting to keep our pretexts safe and sound for that rainy day we've seeded the clouds for.

Q2 to go? Darn, we're already here and a wonderin'. Wonderin'