Tuesday, June 10—Call-in to Congress for Diplomacy with Iran

This is a national action organized by the Campaign for a New American Policy on Iran (www.newiranpolicy.org). Communicating with our representatives is an essential component of our representative democracy! Remember: of the people, by the people, for the people!

*When you call, ask for the aide who handles international affairs or foreign policy. Tell them you’re calling to encourage the Senator or Representative to: (1) Work for direct, unconditional, and comprehensive talks between the U.S. and Iran; (2) Remind them that the U.S. and Iran share common interests in a stable Iraq, Middle East and Afghanistan. (3) And emphasize that just as the U.S. pursued negotiations with North Korea and Libya it’s now time to talk with Iran.

Capitol Switchboard at (202)224-3121 (Also, this toll free number is mentioned in publicity for the event: 800- 788-9372).

Folks,

About 6 months ago, 16 intelligence agencies in the US unanimously arrived at conclusions about Iran’s nuclear program that seem to have been totally forgotten in the new frenzy of preparing to attack Iran. What happened? I’m not asking this question rhetorically. Does anyone out there have a good answer?

Thanks,
Eshi

An Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear sites looks “unavoidable” given the apparent failure of sanctions to deny Tehran technology with bomb-making potential, one of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s deputies said today.

http://wiredispatch.com/news/?id=200639

So yes there seems to be some sort of contradiction here… all US intelligence reports clearly show that Iran is not now nor has any plans in the future of building nuclear weapons, and yet the US and Israel continue to beat their war-drum and threaten Iran almost daily. Perhaps as in times past there is something going on that “the people” just don’t know about? Perhaps that might be “OIL?” Perhaps it is something else. It certainly isn’t fear of a nuclear Iran as Israel claims… but just WHAT is it? That’s the question. Perhaps Israel might sit down one day and actually explain it to the rest of the world instead of threatening to inflict yet more war on an already embattled and beat up world… Perhaps if Israel focused more attention on PEACE rather than FEAR and WAR… just a thought…

Article originally published in the LA Times here

The possibility of a United States or Israeli war to thwart Iran’s nuclear ambitions has been an obsession among foreign policy wonks, diplomats and journalists for some time.

Many Iran experts believe such a war would be a disaster that would fail to halt Iran’s nuclear program. Michael Axworthy (pictured) is one of them.

During the 1970s, the British author and former diplomat traveled to Iran many times while his parents lived and worked there. He joined the British foreign service in 1986, serving as a head of the Iran desk from 1998 to 2000.

Over the last eight years he’s been writing books and teaching about Iran in the United Kingdom. His latest book, “A History of Iran: Empire of the Mind,” was released last month. It traces the country’s history from its earliest days,
emphasizing its religious, intellectual and cultural traditions.

Axworthy graciously agreed to an e-mail interview about Iran and its current confrontation with the West. “The crisis is a result of the hostility that has persisted between the U.S. and Iran since the revolution of 1979 and the hostage crisis.

“But it has its roots in the U.S.-Iran relationship earlier than that, notably in U.S. support for the regime of the Shah in the 1960s and 1970s, and the coup attempted by the British and the CIA against Prime Minister Mossadeq in 1953. The prime reason the clerical regime in Iran might want a nuclear weapon is as a deterrent to the U.S. regime-change policy.”

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An excellent article from truthdig.com relating to recent comment made by barbarian Hilary Clinton regarding Iran.

By Robert Scheer

How proud the Clintonistas must be. They have learned how to rival what Hillary once termed the “vast right-wing conspiracy” in the effort to destroy a viable Democratic leader who dares to stand in the way of their ambitions. The tactics used to kneecap Barack Obama are the same as had been turned on Bill Clinton in earlier times, from radical-baiting associates to challenging his resolve in protecting the nation from foreign enemies. Sen. Clinton’s eminently sensible and centrist—to a fault—opponent is now viewed as weak and even vaguely unpatriotic because he is thoughtful. Neither Karl Rove nor Dick Morris could have done a better job.

On primary election day in Pennsylvania, even with polls showing her well ahead in that state, Hillary went lower in her grab for votes. Seizing upon a question as to how she would respond to a nuclear attack by Iran, which doesn’t have nuclear weapons, on Israel, which does, Hillary mocked reasoned discourse by promising to “totally obliterate them,” in an apparent reference to the population of Iran. That is not a word gaffe; it is an assertion of the right of our nation to commit genocide on an unprecedented scale.

Shouldn’t the potential leader of a nation that used nuclear bombs to obliterate hundreds of thousands of innocent Japanese employ extreme caution before making such a threat? Neither the Japanese then nor the Iranian people now were in a position to hold their leaders accountable, and to approve such collective punishment of innocents is to endorse terrorism. This from a candidate who attacked her opponent for suggesting targeted strikes against militants in Pakistan and derided his openness to negotiations with other national leaders as an irresponsible commitment on the part of a contender for the presidency.

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US and Iran holding ’secret’ talks on nuclear programme

By Anne Penketh, Diplomatic Editor
Monday, 14 April 2008

Iran and the United States have been engaged in secret “back channel” discussions for the past five years on Iran’s nuclear programme and the broader relationship between the two sworn enemies, The Independent can reveal.

One of the participants, former senior US diplomat Thomas Pickering, explained that a group of former American diplomats and experts had been meeting with Iranian academics and policy advisers “in a lot of different places, although not in the US or Iran”.

“Some of the Iranians were connected to official institutions inside Iran,” he said in a telephone interview from Washington. The group was organised by the UN Association of the USA, a pro-UN organisation. Its work was facilitated by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, a government-funded think-tank chaired by the former chief UN weapons inspector for Iraq, Rolf Ekeus.

While the nuclear issue was “prominent”, Mr Pickering said, “we discussed what’s going on domestically in both countries and wide-ranging issues” affecting the US-Iran relationship. Although none of the group members was from the US or Iranian governments, he said that “each side kept their officials informed”. The Bush administration “did not discourage us,” he added.

Mr Pickering declined to go into greater detail for fear of jeopardising future meetings of the group of about a dozen Americans and Iranians, although the number of participants varies. Back- channel talks have often provided crucial impetus in solving the world’s most intractable disputes. They usually only become public in case of agreement, as seen with Northern Ireland and the Oslo accords on the Middle East, or failure, as in the case of an Israeli-Syrian informal channel.

The revelation about the existence of an Iran-US back channel coincides with the recent publication by three of its American members, including Mr Pickering, of proposals aimed at overcoming the deadlock between Iran and the West over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. The initiative addresses the crunch issue of Iran’s right to enrich uranium on its own soil while providing guarantees that the nuclear fuel will not be diverted for military purposes.

Mr Pickering spoke of a “rather positive” reaction to the plan, which provides for an international consortium to jointly manage and run uranium enrichment on Iranian soil.

However, the Bush administration has not responded, and remains wedded to its current policy of sanctions aimed at forcing Iran to halt uranium enrichment in line with UN demands, while offering the opportunity to enrich uranium outside the country through a Russian consortium. A Foreign Office spokesman said Britain was “aware” of the proposals but did not have an official response. The Iranian government, according to Mr Pickering, has let it be known that “they would not respond unless it was offered officially”.

In arms-control circles the plan has gained traction “because he’s so respected,” said George Perkovich of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, referring to Mr Pickering, who is a former US undersecretary of state. The initiative, co-signed by the UNA-USA president William Luers, a former diplomat, and Jim Walsh, a nuclear expert from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was first aired at the end of February in The New York Review of Books where it has generated further discussion.

Mr Pickering says that he and his colleagues decided to act now because US policy was “stuck”, in the light of Iran’s refusal to bow to the UN demand to halt uranium enrichment, despite the imposition of economic sanctions. Prospects for face-to-face US-Iran talks are therefore blocked, he says, arguing that the case is urgent because Iran is continuing to install centrifuges at its main enrichment plant in Natanz.

But other experts point out that with the 3,000 centrifuges at Natanz spinning at only 20 percent of capacity because of technical problems, there is time for the West to play a waiting game.

James Acton, a nuclear specialist at King’s College London Department of War Studies, said the challenge would be to prevent Iran obtaining a clandestine route to a nuclear weapon thanks to the technical know-how that would be obtained from foreign partners.

Mr Pickering said: “It can be feasible if governments wish to make it so, technically and financially. But it will take a lot of negotiation.”

Some analysts pointed out that a breakthrough was unlikely so long as George Bush was in the White House and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad holds the presidency of Iran, where elections are scheduled for next year. “Why would Iran go for it now? They feel like they’ve won, there are not enough sanctions, and there is no threat of war,” said Mr Perkovich.

Calling Iran’s bluff?

The Luers-Pickering-Walsh initiative gives Iran the opportunity to prove that its nuclear intentions are peaceful by yielding to the Iranians’ key demand for a uranium enrichment programme on Iranian soil. The enrichment activities would take place under the supervision of a jointly managed international consortium. The plan is the most detailed of its kind since 2005. Conditions to be negotiated with Iran would include:

*a UN Security Council resolution authorising the arrangement and specifying that if Iran breaks the agreement, member states would be authorised to take punitive action;

*Iran would be barred from producing highly enriched uranium, which is weapons grade fuel, or reprocessed plutonium, which can be an alternative route to producing a bomb;

*Iran would implement the stringent inspection measures in the Additional Protocol to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty;

*Iran would commit itself to building only “safe” light-water reactors.

Read original article from The Independent here