US President Barack Obama has already used experts within the last few months to hold high-level but discreet talks with both Iran and Syria, organizers of the meetings told AFP.
Officially, Obama’s overtures toward both Tehran and Damascus have remained limited.
In an interview broadcast Monday, Obama said the United States would offer arch-foe Iran an extended hand of diplomacy if the Islamic Republic’s leaders “unclenched their fist.”
Kyrie Eleison. May the Lord have mercy.
God has always used the Assyrians, Egyptians, Babylonians as a rod to correct His rebellious adulterous people.
Unless we return to worship and reverence for God and to respect for His Holy Truth, Love and LIFE and repent of lying, lust and death (abortion, adultery, promiscuity, addiction, abandonment, disrespect, stealing from, discarding, ignoring the helpless, unborn, disabled and elderly) – the rod of the Lord will surely come upon us.
The last few months? When GWB was still president and commander-in-chief? I know Pres. Obama needed a transition time to get up to speed on foreign affairs once he was elected before he became president, but I don’t think this should have included “high-level discreet talks with Iran and Syria.” Talk about mixed message.
Branford,
I wouldn’t put it past Obama to have done this before the inauguration. After all, the media and Democrats put high hopes on him as the ‘anointed one’. Nancy Pelosi even demanded at one point that GWB turn over the reigns early because the country couldn’t afford to wait for Jan. 21.
From the Washington Times:
The “diplomatic sources” are not named, so that’s always suspect – how I hope this is not true.
Now we are beginning to reap the whirlwind…a president with no relevant experience, some very naive notions, and a smug ideological attitude, whose one real goal is his own re-election in four years. Some words of comfort(?) to the saner folks out there on the Infobahn…you/we are not alone, just badly outnumbered.
Finally – some wisdom in the state department.
Dear John (comment 7),
This is not wisdom. That will become evident in due course. Are you aware that there’s a report out today (heard a snatch of this on the telly) that Iran has just launched it’s first satellite? Are you prepared for a nuclear-armed Iran? Our country’s new leader seems not to have much understanding that unless one takes care of national defense, nothing else matters. I, for one, will never submit to dhimmitude. Perhaps it was a sign that our local digital movie channel aired “Red Dawn” on the night preceding the election…
#8. A satellite? A weather satellite? That doesn’t say very much. A spy satellite? They are an independent country.
If you are getting your politics from Red Dawn, then I can understand your perspective. I don’t quite see Tehran conquering the US that easily (I’m trying to think about how they would do that). We’ve got a few more weapons than they do. Furthermore, Russia, Egypt and Saudi Arabia aren’t great fans of Iran either. If I recall, we have the most powerful military in the world. Period. I’m not quite shaking in my boots. Further, its not as if most Iranians are interested themselves in invading the US.
Iran, however, given that we rejected their peace initiatives in 2003, might think that we’re planning to attack them. If this is so, then getting a nuclear weapon makes a lot of sense. Given that Israel and US have stated very clearly we would attack first, it seems comprehensible that they would want to defend themselves.
Dear John (#9),
Re the Iranian satellite: lessons learned in a “peaceful” launch can be applied elsewhere; and do we know that it was peaceful? really know? On another issue: have you ever considered what a short- or medium-range missile launched from a submarine could do? If Iran is capable of launching satellites into space, it’s probably capable of developing a short- or medium-range missle that could be launched from a nuclear submarine, which they could either purchase from some other country or even build themselves.
I don’t get my politics from anything Hollywood has ever done, I was just sayin’ about the movie on my local digital channel. The world is a very dangerous place (always was), and I don’t trust the current administration to get the diplomatic/defense pieces in the right places. And, if some of the rhetoric my leftist acquaintances use is acted on, we might not maintain the military superiority you seem to be counting on, should we make some wrong choices.
In any event, the Iranians are mostly interested in eliminating Israel; I don’t think they would take us on yet. I also don’t think they really think we would attack them…aren’t we making sure that Israel doesn’t do just that at the moment? As for defending themselves, well, if no one is attacking, and probably won’t in the near term, why is it that they need defensive weapons? Maybe they will use them against Pakistan? Afghanistan? China? India?
PBS aired “Rick Steves’ Iran” the other day. One of the things he pointed out was a large yellow banner with red lettering in the mosque he visited durign prayers while there.
The banner translated “Death to Israel”.
#9 New Pilgrim
I’m an agnostic about if Iran is evil or not or intends to use satellites for its own purposes. I think of it as a state actor with its own interests, including its own citizens. It may see the US as an aggressor, and that it has a right to protect itself. If we aren’t threatening it, I don’t know what it would do. It depends.
You seem to think of Iran as primarily a rogue state who’s interest is mainly to do evil. I tend to think that there are lots of factors: internal politics (hardliners vs reformists), interests in the Muslim world, as well as economic interests. What is certain is that the hardliners prefer an American “hardline,” as it justifies their own position. The current president has lots of detractors in his own country. But when there is sabre rattling, he solidifies his own support. He likes it when we talk tough to him, because it means he can further crush the reformers in his own country.
There are surely some Iranians would wouldn’t mind the suicide pact of destroying Israel. It wouldn’t be that wise (Iran uses the weapon, Israel would probably use its own).
As far as Israel goes, the general consensus among political scientists who study Iranian politics is that they believe Israel runs US foreign policy. They believe that the only way to talk to the US is by threatening Israel. They can’t threaten us (it would be kind of silly), but they can get at our ally. And since most of the Muslim world is willing to paper over their own differences with a good dose of anti-Israel, Iran can gain the support of the average Muslim.
The reality is pretty complicated. The Arab countries don’t trust Iran that much, but they can’t say anything because their own people support Iran’s “bravery.” But Iran has other interests. A pipeline through Pakistan to India. They also want to live with prosperity. They want to be a first-world country, and think we don’t want them to have prosperity. It seems that you share the view that they cannot be trusted with the elements of prosperity a first-world country has.
Talks are good. They will undermine Iranian hardliners in the long run, and bring greater safety to Israel, and divide the Muslim world. With talks, Iran may be given some incentive to stop arming Hezbollah and Hamas. Right now they don’t have any incentives. They think we’re going to bomb them anyway.
Diplomacy is done on many levels and we’ve been talking to Iran and Syria both formally and informally for quite some time (how long have we had troops on their borders?). The question is what is being said these days.
Dear John (comment #12),
You seem to be convinced that Iran is threatening Israel only to get our attention. But if they are going to do so by funding Hezbollah, building nuclear weapons, testing potential delivery systems, denouncing the state of Israel, and then denying the Holocaust just for good measure, they should not complain about the kind of attention they are getting. Surely they must know that they would receive much more favorable attention (even from those allegedly committed warmongers, the neoconservatives) by renouncing such policies as these–note that it has worked quite well for Libya of late. But that, I fear, is not what the current Iranian regime is after, regardless of how many ordinary Iranians would prefer it to be otherwise.
The name of the game, rather, is that of regional hegemony; and over the next several decades, the region in question will be less the Middle East and more the Indian Ocean. Note the eagerness of China, India, and Pakistan to demonstrate their naval prowess in the fight against East African piracy–there is more going on here than a dedication to free trade and good global citizenship. This burgeoning power struggle will inevitably involve the United States, Australia, and Japan as well (check the recent spate of articles regarding this subject in the Japanese press), and the effect of a nuclear-armed Iran in this region must be taken into account very seriously. If Iran can consolidate Muslim (and even secular Arab) support in the Middle East behind itself through a combination of an arms buildup, state support for terrorism, and diplomatic brinksmanship with the West, it can certainly secure a place for itself as a player in the emerging power struggle.
As for the Iranian reformers, well, it depends upon just what it is they want to reform. If what they want is Western-style democracy (which, despite the criticism and self-doubt of U.S. liberals, is actually showing some promise in Iraq), it is one thing. But there are others–primarily well-educated elitists–who are more interested in modernization and secularization than in democracy [i]per se[/i]; and for them, material prosperity under the Chinese mixture of capitalism, nationalism, authoritarianism, and, perhaps, militarism (didn’t we used to call this fascism?) provides the more alluring model. I can see little that would prevent this latter group from forming an accommodation with the hardliners, and [i]vice-versa[/i].
Much, therefore, will depend upon the response of the United States to all of this. Talks, as you say, are fine…as far as they go; but talks backed by nothing other than more talk are worse than useless. Perhaps now you see why I believed, and continue to believe, that a former naval officer might posses more of the relevant experience than an unpublished law professor turned community organizer.
New Pilgrim, they did try for “good attention” in 2003 and were rejected outright. For that reason, they consider us the aggressors. Do you remember that offer?
Your next paragraph shows a pretty good general reading, but it seems that you think that this is necessarily going to be the case. It does illuminate our past mistakes – such as supporting Iraq during the Iraq-Iran war. Unfortunately, the real winner in the Iraq war was Iran. And we’ve given them a lot more authority due to our own belligerence.
I’m not sure why a career naval officer would be any better than a law professor. That seems to be an intuition more than anything. If we want productive diplomacy, hiring diplomats seems far more reasonable. In fact, I have no reason to believe that the law professor, given the caliber of the people working in the state department, has decided to forgo the support of his own military or the support of other regional powers. There is simply no evidence that he’s offering anything except that we negotiate in good faith, which is far more than what was offered in the previous eight years, and may assuage the fear among the Iranian government that we’d blow them to smithereens anyway if we could. the law professor doesn’t need to puff himself up because he’s already aware that we have a pretty powerful military, whether he pushes Iran around or not.
John:
So they tried for good attention, did they? How? By putting their nuclear program on ice after their most immediate concern, a nuclear-armed Iraq (yes, they too believed in the existence of Saddam’s WMDs, for the simple reason that the Baathist regime did everything it could to convince the world that it had them and was hiding them–an attempted bluff that became one of the worst judgment calls in history), no longer existed because of the 2003 war? Did they cease to support Hezbollah? Did they hesitate to assist Shi’ite insurgents once it became clear that Bush, Rumsfeld, & Co. had badly underestimated the number of troops would be needed to maintain order in postwar Iraq? Even if your contention were true, it makes no sense: why would a country that is supposedly terrified of being bombed by the United States revert to a provocative stance rather than simply redouble its (alleged) peace offensive? Perhaps the leaders in Teheran are addicted to the thrill of high-stakes gambling–although their boldness did seem to increase in proportion to the stridency of the anti-war movement.
As for my next paragraph showing “a pretty good general reading” (an unfortunate and unintended consequence of my attempt to keep the conversation at what I perceive to be your reading level), I must say that your second paragraph betrays a regrettable inability to grasp the central point. The trite and sophomoric thesis that “the real winner of the Iraq war was Iran” overlooks the essential reason for our remaining in the Gulf region, which is to forestall precisely that eventuality–much as we remained in Western Europe after 1945 to prevent Stalin from becoming the sole beneficiary of Hitler’s defeat. Moreover, with regard to the emerging power struggle in the Indian Ocean, Beijing’s plans to construct aircraft carriers is no longer a mere hypothesis; it is established fact–I really do suggest that you refer to recently published articles that can be searched in Real Clear World.
And this, of course, brings us to the final point. Note that I did not say that “a career naval officer would be any better that a law professor”; I said that the experience of a senior naval officer is more relevant to the proper assessment of long-term naval strategy that that of a junior member of a law school faculty–a contention, I should think, so patently self-evident as to escape any confusion with intuition. In addition, it should not be forgotten that this particular former naval officer correctly assessed the need for the troop surge, while this particular law professor apparently did not recognize a winning strategy when it was staring him right in the face.
Since all diplomacy must necessarily take place within parameters set by strategic realities (indeed, if there were no armies and navies, there would be no need for diplomats at all), a Commander-in-Chief’s ability to assess those realities for himself is crucial. It is not enough to hire advisors (hopefully Obama’s will not have any tax problems), for a President can always hire advisors who will tell him whatever he wants to hear. George W. Bush certainly demonstrated the danger of a chief executive who could not distinguish good advice from bad. Now we have a chief executive who has even less military experience than did George W. Bush.