[Mb-civic] "Cabal" Blocked 2003 Nuclear Talks With Iran

[Linda Hassler]

More about "the other side of the story" regarding Iran's fruitless 
attempts to talk to the U.S. a while back.

Linda Hassler

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/042106N.shtml


"Cabal" Blocked 2003 Nuclear Talks With Iran
     By Gareth Porter
      Inter Press Service

      Tuesday 28 March 2006

      Washington - The George W. Bush administration failed to enter 
into negotiations with Iran on its nuclear programme in May 2003 
because neoconservative zealots who advocated destabilisation and 
regime change were able to block any serious diplomatic engagement with 
Tehran, according to former administration officials.

      The same neoconservative veto power also prevented the 
administration from adopting any official policy statement on Iran, 
those same officials say.

      Lawrence Wilkerson, then chief of staff to Secretary of State 
Colin Powell, says the failure to adopt a formal Iran policy in 
2002-2003 was the result of obstruction by a "secret cabal" of 
neoconservatives in the administration, led by Vice Pres. Dick Cheney.

      "The secret cabal got what it wanted: no negotiations with 
Tehran," Wilkerson wrote in an e-mail to IPS.

      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 U.S. concerns about its nuclear programme, 
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.

      It also raised the possibility of cutting off Iran's support for 
Hamas and Islamic Jihad and converting Hezbollah into a purely 
socio-political organisation, 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 United States 
to address security questions, the lifting of economic sanctions and 
normalisation of relations, including support for Iran's integration 
into the global economic order.

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

      Realists, led by Powell and his Deputy Richard Armitage, were 
inclined to respond positively to the Iranian offer. Nevertheless, 
within a few days of its receipt, the State Department had rebuked the 
Swiss ambassador for having passed on the offer.

      Exactly how the decision was made is not known. "As with many of 
these issues of national security decision-making, there are no 
fingerprints," Wilkerson told IPS. "But I would guess Dick Cheney with 
the blessing of George W. Bush."

      As Wilkerson observes, however, the mysterious death of what 
became known among Iran specialists as Iran's "grand bargain" 
initiative was a result of the administration's inability to agree on a 
policy toward Tehran.

      A draft National Security Policy Directive (NSPD) on Iran calling 
for diplomatic engagement had been in the process of interagency 
coordination for more than a year, according to a source who asks to 
remain unidentified.

      But it was impossible to get formal agreement on the NSPD, the 
source recalls, because officials in Cheney's office and in 
Undersecretary of Defence for Policy Douglas Feith's Office of Special 
Plans wanted a policy of regime change and kept trying to amend it.

      Opponents of the neoconservative policy line blame Condoleezza 
Rice, then the National Security Adviser, for the failure of the 
administration to override the extremists in the administration. The 
statutory policymaker process on Iran, Wilkerson told IPS in e-mail, 
was "managed by a national security adviser incapable of standing up to 
the cabal..."

      In the absence of an Iran policy, the two contending camps 
struggled in 2003 over a proposal by realists in the administration to 
reopen the Geneva channel with Iran that had been used successfully on 
Afghanistan in 2001-2002. They believed Iran could be helpful in 
stabilising post-conflict Iraq, because the Iraqi Shiite militants who 
they expected to return from Iran after Hussein's overthrow owed some 
degree of allegiance to Iran.

      The neoconservatives tried to block those meetings on tactical 
policy grounds, according to Leverett. "They were saying we didn't want 
to engage with Iran because we didn't want to owe them," he recalls.

      Nevertheless, U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad was 
authorised to begin meeting secretly in Geneva with Iranian officials 
to discuss Iraq. The neoconservatives then tried to sandbag the talks 
by introducing a demand for full information on any high-ranking al 
Qaeda cadres who might be detained by the Iranians.

      Iran regarded that information as a bargaining chip to be given up 
only for a quid pro quo from Washington. The Bush administration, 
however, had adopted a policy in early 2002 of refusing to share any 
information with Iran on al Qaeda or other terrorist organisations.

      On May 3, as the Iranian "grand bargain" proposal was on its way 
to Washington, Tehran's representative in Geneva, Javad Zarif, offered 
a compromise on the issue, according to Leverett: if the United States 
gave Iran the names of the cadres of the Mujahideen e Kalq (MEK) who 
were being held by U.S. forces in Iraq, Iran would give the United 
States the names of the al Qaeda operatives they had detained.

      The MEK had carried out armed attacks against Iran from Iraqi 
territory during the Saddam regime and had been named a terrorist 
organisation by the United States. But it had capitulated to U.S. 
forces after the invasion, and the neoconservatives now saw the MEK as 
a potential asset in an effort to destabilise the Iranian regime.

      The MEK had already become a key element in the alternative draft 
NSPD drawn up by neoconservatives in the administration.

      The indictment of Iran analyst Larry Franklin on Feith's staff 
last year revealed that, by February 2003, Franklin had begun sharing a 
draft NSPD that he knew would be to the liking of the Israeli Embassy.

      (Franklin eventually pled guilty to passing classified information 
to two employees of an influential pro-Israel lobbying group and was 
sentenced to 12 and a half years in prison.)

      Reflecting the substance of that draft policy, ABC News reported 
on May 30, 2003 that the Pentagon was calling for the destabilisation 
of the Iranian government by "using all available points of pressure on 
the Iranian regime, including backing armed Iranian dissidents and 
employing the services of the Mujahideen e Kalq..."

      Nevertheless, Pres. Bush apparently initially saw nothing wrong 
with trading information on MEK, despite arguments that MEK should not 
be repatriated to Iran. "I have it on good authority," Leverett told 
IPS, "that Bush's initial reaction was, 'But we say there is no such 
thing as a good terrorist'." Nevertheless, Bush finally rejected the 
Iranian proposal.

      By the end of May, the neoconservatives had succeeded in closing 
down the Geneva channel for good. They had hoped to push through their 
own NSPD on Iran, but according to the Franklin indictment, in October 
1983, Franklin told an Israeli embassy officer that work on the NSPD 
had been stopped.

      But the damage had been done. With no direct diplomatic contact 
between Iran and the United States, the neoconservatives had a clear 
path to raising tensions and building political support for regarding 
Iran as the primary enemy of the United States.

      --------

      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.