Remember this I’m-a-peaceful-man-who-wants-to -resolve-things-through-diplomacy remark from our dear President earlier this year?
US President George W Bush has said he wants to resolve the Iranian nuclear crisis through peaceful means.
After talks in Washington with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Mr Bush said both leaders sought to solve the issue “diplomatically by working together”.
Well, not very surprisingly, and to borrow a phrase from Al Franken, it turns out that Bush is a Big Fat Liar:
Iran has prepared a high-level delegation to hold wide-ranging talks with the US, but the Bush administration is resisting the agenda suggested by Tehran despite pressure from European allies to engage the Islamic republic, Iranian politicians have told the Financial Times.
Iran’s willingness to engage the US on Iraq, regional security and the nuclear issue, is believed to have the approval of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. It represents the most serious attempt by the Islamic republic to reach out to the US since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
But the White House insisted on Thursday that its own offer of talks with Iran, extended several months ago by Zalmay Khalilzad, the US ambassador to Baghdad, was limited to the subject of Iraq.
“There are none and none are scheduled,” Stephen Hadley, national security adviser, was quoted by a spokesman as saying about the prospect of talks with the Iranian delegation in Baghdad next week.
Indeed, day by day it becomes ever more apparent that the United States of Bush government couldn’t care less about negotiating a resolution to the Iranian nuclear crisis. More and more observers are becoming convinced that the real aim of its policy has less to do with the so-called threat of Iran’s nuclear program than it has to do with the Neocons’ favorite buzz word: regime change.
Think I’m exaggerating? Not according to Flynt L. Leverett, who formerly held senior posts at the National Security Agency, the National Security Council, the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency:
The Bush administration has deliberately ruled out direct negotiations with Iran either over the nuclear issue or over the broad range of strategic issues that you would need to talk to Iran about if you were going to get a real diplomatic settlement on the nuclear issue.
. . . [Y]ou had a bunch of neo-cons, and even the president himself [against dialogue], it’s not just the neo-cons who wanted regime change and nothing else. Ultimately the president is, on this issue, very, very resistant to the idea of doing a deal, even a deal that would solve the nuclear problem. You don’t do a deal that would effectively legitimate this regime that he considers fundamentally illegitimate. I think that’s the real issue.
In essence, despite Bush’s claim in January that he wanted to find a diplomatic solution, he is simply fulfilling a campaign promise he made back in July, 2004 when he said he would make regime change in Iran a priority in his second term:
PRESIDENT George Bush has promised that if re-elected in November he will make regime change in Iran his new target.
Bush named Iran as part of the Axis of Evil along with North Korea and Iraq almost three years ago. A US government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that military action would not be overt in changing Iran, but rather that the US would work to stir revolts in the country and hope to topple the current conservative religious leadership.
The official said: “If George Bush is re-elected there will be much more intervention in the internal affairs of Iran.”
Recent stories in the Washington Post and the british daily, the Telegraph , both of which relied upon unnamed administration sources, make it very clear that the policy driving the conflict with Iran is all about changing its form of government.
“The upper hand is with those who are pushing regime change rather than those who are advocating more diplomacy,” said Richard N. Haass, who as State Department policy planning director in Bush’s first term was among those pushing for engagement.
In fact, considering what actions the administration has taken lately with respect to Iran, its hard to see how diplomacy fits into their thinking, except as a smokescreen for their true intentions:
The focus on Iran inside the administration lately has been striking. Bush, according to aides, has been spending more time on the issue, and advisers have invited 30 to 40 specialists for consultations in recent months. […]
Undersecretary of State R. Nicholas Burns said in an interview that the department will also add staff in Dubai, which is part of the United Arab Emirates, as well as at other embassies in the vicinity of Iran, all assigned to watch Tehran. He called the new Dubai outpost the “21st century equivalent” of the Riga station in Latvia that monitored the Soviet Union in the 1930s when the United States had no embassy in Moscow.
The administration also has launched a $75 million program to advance democracy in Iran by expanding broadcasting into the country, funding nongovernmental organizations and promoting cultural exchanges. Voice of America broadcasts one hour a day into Iran; by April, that will grow to four hours a day, and the administration plans to go to 24 hours a day. But the administration suffered a setback last week when lawmakers slashed $19 million, mainly from broadcast operations.
Remember this when the campaign ads roll out this Fall hyping the menace Iran poses to our safety and security. Bush doesn’t care about Iran’s nuclear program except as an excuse to justify what he and his cadre of loyal neocons have always wanted to do: attack Iran in order to depose its leadership and install a more “democratic” American-friendly regime.
And we all know how well that’s worked out for them in Iraq, now don’t we?