US To Talk To Iran
Isn’t this what the Bush administration and their supporters have said they wouldn’t and shouldn’t support? Nevertheless, William Burns, who is America’s third-ranking diplomat (He is currently ambassador to Russia.) will sit down this Saturday in Switzerland with Iranian envoy Saeed Jalili and European foreign policy head Javier Solanas in an attempt to halt Iran’s nuclear weapons development.
The package of incentives was accompanied by a letter from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the foreign ministers of the other five countries and sets out a scenario in which Iran would get a temporary reprieve from economic and financial sanctions in exchange for freezing its enrichment activities.
I’d like to hear from all those who blasted Barack Obama for wanting dialogue with our enemies. I’d like to hear from all those who, while praising Bush’s previous intransigence, protested the idea of any kind of sit-down with Iran.
The script for how this is going to turn out has already been written and “talking” ain’t part of the play.
It’s a perfect storm. Religion. Business. History.
Don’t fight the tape.
July 16th, 2008 at 12:40 am
I just posted the news article from FoxNews on my facebook page! Think I didn’t mention exactly what you just posted in your blog! HAH! Converting one Republican at a time here in Texas!
July 16th, 2008 at 1:02 am
anonymouse, you are on to something.
I wanted to call in to the show during the last hour, but I was in the middle of something and couldn’t. But if I had been able to call in and talk to Alan, I would have said “Please let us not be so gullible. George W. is a psychopath, and he’s dangerous now because time is running out on his legacy.”
Then I would have told Alan about a serious article I came across just an hour ago. This article proves we are the most gullible public in the history of the USA. Everyone here who reads this, please read this article, then come back here and tell me what you think. Read the writer’s brief bio on the page while you are at it:
http://www.apj.us/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1555&Itemid=2
It will make you look at the Monkey Man in a whole new, scary way. The point of the piece may be $400-a-barrel crude, but its underlying tale is macabre.
July 16th, 2008 at 1:04 am
I’m on a moped but I’m ridin’ it like its a benz…
ni88@
July 16th, 2008 at 1:05 am
I’m on a moped but I’m ridin’ it like its a benz…
ni88@
July 16th, 2008 at 1:05 am
This “incentive” offer has been recycled, and was previously characterized by independent experts and diplomats as “an empty box in a lot of pretty wrapping”
See:
http://www.basicint.org/pubs/Notes/BN050811-IranEU.htm
July 16th, 2008 at 1:13 am
I heard about Bush’s “amber light” last night on another radio show, but seeing it in print from an American who’s living abroad gives it a whole new credibility.
Also, Bush is meeting with Olmert this weekend in DC area.
I think this “diplomacy” story Alan is selling here is simply one more stenography job from our worthless, in-the-tank Washington Press Corpse.
Think about it: the Monkey Man gets to pad his sickly resume with more WAR, and gets John Insane elected.
Who cares how many innocent lives get sacrificed to Monkey Man’s ego?
July 16th, 2008 at 1:20 am
If oil goes to $400 a barrell, it will only be the politicians out riding around, so it will be easy pickings for us to finally eliminate those bastards as we have slept idly by and let them ruin this country.
July 16th, 2008 at 1:23 am
Are you purposely misrepresenting the Republican position or do you really not understand it? What’s objectionable is not the idea of negotiations with Iran, it’s the idea of the President of the United States directly negotiating with Ahamdinejad “without preconditions” as Obama suggested. What is hard to understand about that?
July 16th, 2008 at 1:59 am
APPEASER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
July 16th, 2008 at 4:55 am
Colmes you are a sad sad sad puppet of the left. You are naught but a token puppet centrist masquerading as a socialist and now you claim to have solutions for multidimensional lattice-work geopolitical dillemas involving dozens of conflicting cultures and personalities. Let’s just apply a simple principle like finding the distance between two coordinates on a graph and that will defuse the tensions between the Zionists and the Persian caliphate; NO, Obama verifying the regime in Iran does not bode well. Have negotiated talks all you want but the commander-in-chief shouldn’t go unless he wants to beg, of course you hate America so much you’d love to see us prostrate and dependent on foreign dictatorships, that’s why you oppose oil independence even though Michael Scheuer has suggested not only will Iran be a target in the future but the Nigerian swamps as well if we keep worrying about the shrimp and the caribou to satisfy you tree hugging lunatics. Enjoy selling yourself out next to the biggest neocon idiot on television every night to destroy the image of authentic egalitarian communists everywhere, there are only inches on the spectrum between you and soft liberal O’Reilly, probably even closer than the Leprechaun and your friend Wallbanger. Sayonnara refuse pit.
July 16th, 2008 at 5:18 am
Alan, I don’t think you are being very honest when you accuse the neoconservatives of claiming that negotiations between nations should not take place. Although knowing that Mr. Hannity is not a very smart man, not a smart man at all, he might have said at different times he thinks we should be isolationists, but that would contradict their recent conversion to foreign interventionism once Bush decided to pre-emptively invade Iraq. So I don’t see a problem with what the Bush administration is doing because they aren’t sending the president himself, thank goodness, war might break out overnight. But its not really a problem like you are trying to make it out to be in your post, Obama shouldn’t have said he would meet with Ahmadinejad personally and definitely without preconditions. The Iranian president is a scary guy and he needs to promise to respect Israel’s right to exist before we trust him to be in the room with our president because he can’t be allowed to dictate the terms of disarmament.
Have a nice day Alan, you are a lot brighter than Hannity who looks really sad next to you every night.
July 16th, 2008 at 5:25 am
There is no mystery about what Iran accomplishes when it goes through the motions of “negotiating”.
They openly proclaim to their people what they’re doing.. like in this video from Iran
http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/0/0/0/0/0/216/805.htm
Title:
Chief Iranian Negotiator on the Nuclear Issue Hosein Musavian: The Negotiations with Europe Bought Us Time to Complete the Esfahan UCF Project and the Work on the Centrifuges in Natanz
Did you see that… Iran pulling the chain of the EU3 bought the time they needed to get expertise on uranium fuel cycle.
Here is the transcript.
I get so frustrated about how naive so many in the West are.That they allow Iran to play them like the fools they are.
The link to these transcripts is with the video
========================
The following are excerpts from an interview withIranian chief negotiator on nuclear affairs, and member of the Iranian Supreme Council for National Security Hosein Musavian, which aired on Iranian Channel 2 on August 4, 2005
Musavian: Those (in Iran) who criticize us and claim that we should have only worked with the IAEA do not know that at that stage – that is, in August 2003 – we needed another year to complete the Esfahan (UCF) project, so it could be operational. They say that because of that 50-day (ultimatum), we should have kept (the UCF) in Esfahan incomplete, and that we needed to comply with the IAEA’s demands and shut down the facilities.
The regime adopted a twofold policy here: It worked intensively with the IAEA, and it also conducted negotiations on international and political levels. The IAEA gave us a 50-day extension to suspend the enrichment and all related activities. But thanks to the negotiations with Europe we gained another year, in which we completed (the UCF) in Esfahan.
[...]
There was a time when we said we would not work with Europe, the world, or the IAEA, and that we would not comply with any of their demands. There were very clear consequences: After 50 days, the IAEA Board of Governors would have undoubtedly handed the Iranian dossier over to the (U.N.) Security Council. There is no doubt about it. As for those who say we should have worked only with the IAEA – this would have meant depriving Iran of the opportunity to complete the Esfahan project in the one-year extension.
Esfahan’s (UCF) was completed during that year. Even in Natanz, we needed six to twelve months to complete the work on the centrifuges. Within that year, the Natanz project reached a stage where the small number of centrifuges required for the preliminary stage, could operate. In Esfahan, we have reached UF4 and UF6 production stages.
[...]
We suspended the UCF in Esfahan in October 2004, although we were required to do so in October 2003. If we had suspended it then, (the UCF) in Esfahan would have never been completed. Today we are in a position of power: (The UCF) in Esfahan is complete and UF4 and UF6 gasses are being produced. We have a stockpile of products, and during this period, we have managed to convert 36 tons of Yellow Cake into gas and store it. In Natanz, much of the work has been completed.
[...]
Thanks to our dealings with Europe, even when we got a 50-day ultimatum, we managed to continue the work for two years. This way we completed (the UCF) in Esfahan. This way we carried out the work to complete Natanz, and on top of that, we even gained benefits. For 10 years, America prevented Iran from joining the WTO. This obstacle was removed, and Iran began talks in order to join the WTO. In the past, the world did not accept Iran as a member of the group of countries with a nuclear fuel cycle. In these two years, and thanks to the Paris Agreement, we entered the international game of the nuclear fuel cycle, and Iran was recognized as one of the countries with a nuclear fuel cycle. An Iranian delegate even participated in the relevant talks. We gained other benefits during these two years as well.
[...]
Host: Mr. Musavian, there is a point that our viewers might find interesting - the comparison between Iran’s nuclear activity dossier and North Korea’s.
[...]
There is a belief that if we adopted the North Korean model, we could have stood much stronger against the excessive demands of America and Europe.
[...]
Musavian: During these two years of negotiations, we managed to make far greater progress than North Korea. North Korea’s most important achievement had to do with security guarantees. We achieved the same thing a year ago in the negotiations with the Europeans. They agreed to give us international guarantees for Iran’s security, its national rule, its independence, non-intervention in its internal affairs, its national security, and not invading it.
July 16th, 2008 at 8:43 am
As another piece of evidence that Iran uses “talks” to string along gullible Westerners and play them for time, I present this.
Originally from Iran’s news service, FARS (in Farsi), published by National Review here we have the Iranians stating that the so-called reformists Khatami years , whereby Iran had given the appearance of having the potential to reform and moderate itself was simply a tactic Iran used sot hey could establish the foundations of thier nuclear weapons plan.
==================
The Iranians are clearly engaged in a very long-term plan of thier design.
All this talk about the good-faithedness of the United States that so many critics of the US cite as somehow being the factor that everyone should pay attention to, or attribute as the main stumbling block, is clearly not based in reality.
But like with all other matters related to the Islamic Jihad against the rest of the world, I see no one in the Left willing to do anything more than simply and reflexively oppose whatever the United States is doing/has done and narcissisticly suppose that the islamic world is motived by the same gripes that the Left has.
July 16th, 2008 at 8:45 am
And no one should discount these words from the Iranians:
1
Commandant of Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi, said on state television. “God willing, the 21st century will see the defeat of the U.S. and the Zionists, and the victory of freedom-seeking nations of the world. The final goal of the [1979] revolution is to create global Islamic rule and a regime of law to be led by the Imam Mahdi”.
2
The [Iranians] President’s chief strategist, Hassan Abbassi, has come up with a war plan based on the premise that “Britain is the mother of all evils” – the evils being America, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, the Gulf states and even Canada, all of whom are the malign progeny of the British Empire. “We have a strategy drawn up for the destruction of Anglo-Saxon civilization,” says Mr Abbassi. “There are 29 sensitive sites in the U.S. and in the West. We have already spied on these sites and we know how we are going to attack them… Once we have defeated the Anglo-Saxons the rest will run for cover.”
3
The IRGC chief warned that Iran was seeing through “critical days” and “fate-determining years”. He described the purpose of Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution as the “Salvation of Muslims” from the hands of the “oppressive U.S. and Israel”.
July 16th, 2008 at 8:46 am
Yeah, thanks to the disaster that is this administration, Iran,(the REAL winner of the Iraq war), is ratcheting their bellicosity to match Bush/Cheney’s.
Actually, Ahmadinejad is in Iran only because Bush is here.
Remember right after 9/11, there were candlelight vigils in Tehran.
Then Bush started with his axis of evil, and even after helping us in Afganistan, they find themselves with a foreign aggressor on two borders.
July 16th, 2008 at 9:43 am
Regardless of how rosy a picture the conservatives like to paint, this administration has destroyed our relations with other nations because of their sabre rattling.
I think Bush is upset because Iran said they will defend themselves if attacked (as would most any country)
July 16th, 2008 at 10:57 am
>Regardless of how rosy a picture the conservatives like to paint, this administration has destroyed our relations with other nations because of their sabre rattling.
Which nations?
July 16th, 2008 at 11:13 am
the bush administration and conservatives are obviously guilty of hypocrisy in this situation. it’ll be interesting to hear how the conservative pundits spin this today.
i think that obama’s position on meeting with our enemies has helped. but also, sarkozy hosted the palestinian and israeli presidents last week. i think that our administration is recognizing (at least behind closed doors) that our position as peacekeepers of the world is slipping, thanks to our unjustified invasion of iraq and ongoing occupation.
July 16th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
“…I see no one in the Left willing to do anything more than simply and reflexively oppose whatever the United States is doing…”
We should all oppose whatever the Bush regime wants to do, because, whatever it is, even if it makes a lick of sense, they’ll find a way to screw it up.
July 16th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
“…I see no one in the Left willing to do anything more than simply and reflexively oppose whatever the United States is doing…”
Who said that?
Someone who keeps confusing Bush with America?
July 16th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
lol, RC. unfortunately, you make a very good point.
July 16th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
no new threads yet! :-( alan, why don’t you hire me as your blog writer? i come fairly cheap, and will even let the conservatives who frequent the blog continue to leave their comments (bc it’s entertaining).
July 16th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/mexico-complains-too-many-repatriated-mexicans
now they know what they’ve so gladly done to us!
July 16th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
who farted?
July 16th, 2008 at 10:29 pm
Vinnie Pee thanks for organizing your inane bullshit into such professional outline form…
July 17th, 2008 at 1:47 am
lol, fury.
July 17th, 2008 at 1:49 pm