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USADI
Commentary
Desperate Clerical Measures
In March 1990, one
year into his first term as president, Hashemi
Rafsanjani mocked President Bush Sr. for taking
a telephone call from someone posing as
Rafsanjani offering a one-to-one talk between
the two countries. “America is very much in need
of talking to Iran, and praise be to God, is
deprived of this. Iran is so important that the
biggest power in the world, the biggest bully on
earth, tries to contact its officials by
telephone,” Rafsanjani said. The hoax set up by
the clerical regime then sought to embarrass
President Bush over the issue of the “talk”.
Sixteen years later, one wonders what sort of
ploy Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is
working up with its March 2006 overture for
talks with the United States.
The US national security adviser Stephen Hadley
chas orrectly described Iran's last week
overture a ploy to “divert pressure.” Other
senior officials called it "a stunt" and a
“puffery. With five day delay, Khamenei did his
own spinning. "If (talks) mean opening up an
arena for deceitful Americans to continue their
bullying attitude, talks with America on Iraq
are banned," he said.
The supposed one-to-one talk, which seems rather
doubtful to ever take place, is not the first
time the two sides hold talks. In months
preceding the 2003 Iraq war, Washington and
Tehran held private official talks in Geneva. At
the time, the administration thought it had
reached an agreement with the mullahs not to
meddle in Iraq after Saddam Hussein. According
to a May 12, 2003 report in the Wall Street
Journal, “In January [2003]... the Iranians were
told that one of the U.S. war aims was to
eliminate the [main Iranian opposition]
Mujahedin-e-Khalq, a longtime Iranian goal. In
return, the U.S. asked Iran not to send armed
fighters into Iraq.” The mullahs, however, could
not let go of their strategic goal of
establishing a client regime in Iraq; even in
exchange for elimination of their mortal enemy,
the Iranian Mujahedin. They reneged on the deal
and unleashed their forces into Iraq to exploit
the post-war security and political vacuum.
The idea of talk over the issue of Iran’s
unsavory role in Iraq was first made last
November by the US Ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay
Khalilzad, and the clerical regime immediately
rejected it. So question is why now Tehran is
making a similar overture? Is it, as many of
Tehran’s apologists say these days, from
position of strength? What is in it for them? It
is not certainly out of love for the world peace
and the good of humanity.
Tehran’s diplomatic and foreign policy machine
has had an astonishing dive in recent months and
the theocratic regime has been faced with an
increasingly emboldened and restive populace at
home. On the day Ali Larijani, head of Iran's
Supreme National Security Council and its top
nuclear negotiator, made the offer, he appeared
in a closed-door session of Iran’s Parliament.
Coming under pressure about the wisdom of his
overture, Larijani told the parliament that “the
preservation of the regime has the highest
priority and the Supreme Leader has placed the
safeguarding of the regime at the top of Iran’s
foreign policy strategy in the nuclear issue.”
Tehran understands full well how the regional
and nuclear equations have changed to its
detriment since last November. In Iraq, not only
the Iran-influenced United Iraqi Alliance did
not get the parliamentary majority as expected
by Tehran, it now has to face a nascent but
rising Iraqi anti-fundamentalist front
consisting of Kurds, Secular Shiites, and Sunnis
parliamentary blocks.
On the nuclear front, Tehran’s last minute
pulling of a Russian “stunt’ did not prevent the
referral of its nuclear case to the UN Security
Council. The momentum against mullahs’ nuclear
violations gained further speed when Washington
joined by Britain and France moved quickly for a
Security Council action.
Meanwhile, Washington has found a new focus for
its Iran policy which amounts to a
multi-faceted, multi-pronged diplomatic
offensive. The newly published US national
security strategy states that “we may face no
greater challenge from a single country than
from Iran.” Adding to Tehran worries, there has
been a rising call in the US Congress and some
policy circles for the removal of Iran’s main
opposition group, the People’s Mojahedin from
the State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist
Organizations; a move which would serve as the
clearest sign yet that Washington is serious
about indigenous regime change in Iran.
Desperate times call for desperate measures.
With the green light from the Supreme Leader
Khamenei, Larijani made the “talk” overture
primarily to throw a monkey wrench at the
ongoing campaign in the Security Council against
its nuclear drive. The mullahs’ ploy also
intends to reverse the recent diplomatic and
political setbacks abroad which have already
emboldened Iranians who have sensed the growing
vulnerability of the clerical regime, evident by
the rising popular and labor unrest in recent
months.
Given the real intentions of Tehran, no matter
how tactically beneficial it might have been,
Washington’s positive response was not wise.
Even if the talks never take place, Tehran has
already scored some point. The positive response
has sent a contradictory signal to people in
Iran who were recently assured of the American
campaign to isolate their ruling despots and
“support for their democratic aspirations.”
Tehran could also benefit by putting Washington
in a position to be seen as violating its own
stated policy of no negotiation with the state
sponsors of terrorism.
Nevertheless, the clerical regime has made even
a bigger miscalculation by making the offer. It
can not deliver what is expected of it in Iraq,
and at home there is a political price to be
paid, similar to Khomeini’s acceptance of
cease-fire with Iraq which he famously likened
to drinking from a challis of poison. Still,
this terrorist tyranny should have been deprived
of the opportunity to make any gains on its
self-preserving desperate overture for talks.
(USADI)
USADI
Commentary reflects the viewpoints of the US Alliance
for Democratic Iran in respect to issues and events
which directly or indirectly impact the US policy toward
Iran |