I don’t know how much the blogosphere has contributed to Bush’s low poll numbers. I wish there were some way to accurately measure our impact. I do know that by relentlessly exposing the Bush administration’s lies, we have had an effect on the corporate media’s coverage. I suspect we’ve even changed how the administration goes about crafting their message. They can no longer rely on pseudo journalists like Jeff Gannon and his GOPNews outfit. Whatever our influence has been, it appears it may have helped save the lives of an untold numbers of Persians.
The Bush administration’s decision to consider sitting down with the Iranian government underscores a central truth of diplomacy today: Nuclear weapons buy leverage.
For six years, President Bush and his aides have dismissed the idea of talking with Iran about its nuclear programs, and until last year gave little support to European efforts to restrain Iranian nuclear activity…
Now, in perhaps the biggest foreign policy shift of his presidency, Bush has approved the idea of sitting down at the table with the Iranian government — one headed by a former student radical who denies the Holocaust…the offer overturned a long-standing taboo, and it came from an administration stocked with officials who have made little secret of their desire to overthrow the government in Tehran.
The administration made this move at a moment of weakness. The president’s public opinion ratings are among the lowest ever recorded for a modern president, and oil prices have reached record levels, in part because of the confrontation with Iran. The high price of oil, in turn, has enriched the Iranian treasury.
I think Kessler’s analysis is correct. The administration is definitely chock-full of officials that want to change the regime in Iran. And, in their world-view, agreeing to have talks with Iran is a show of weakness. They don’t have the allies abroad, or on Capitol Hill, to unilaterally attack Iran. It’s the cratering of Bush’s popularity that has lost him the support of important Senators like Chairman of the Foreign Affairs committee Richard Lugar. It’s hard to say what kind of support Bush would have for attacking Iran if he still was soaring in the polls, but I very much doubt he would be opening up diplomatic channels.
Even so, war has not necessarily been averted. The hawks in the administration have attached conditions to the talks, most likely in the hope that the conditions will be rejected. If they are, Russia and China have agreed to go along with a tough sanctions regimen.
A senior administration official said there is substantial agreement from Russia and China — two nations that have resisted sanctions against Iran — on an escalating series of U.N. penalties that would be imposed if Iran does not comply…
…Senior Chinese and Russian officials welcomed the U.S. offer of direct talks, saying it showed an increased willingness to pursue diplomatic means to resolve the budding nuclear crisis. Still, Wang Guangya, China’s ambassador to the United Nations, said the United States should provide Iran with security assurances and drop its demand that Iran cease uranium enrichment before such talks could begin.
“I think it in a way proves that the U.S. is more serious about the negotiations than about other options, but I do hope that this offer could be less conditional,” Wang told reporters…
“If this is what it takes to get Russia and China to join in sanctions, so be it,” one administration skeptic said. “But I am most concerned that we will end up renegotiating with ourselves again.”
This has echoes of the strategy pursued in Iraq. The plan back in 2002 was the attach conditions to the return of weapons inspectors that would be rejected by Saddam, and thereby gain the casus belli for war. Saddam called their bluff and met all their conditions. If Iran wants to avoid crippling sanctions, they will have to at least agree to sit down and talk.
Cheney, Bolton, et al, are chafing at the bit. They want to have regime change in Iran before they are forced to leave office. But, it looks like they are too weakened to pull it off. That’s a good thing for world peace.
I’m in the camp that this was an offer intended to be refused.
I’m curious just how cooperative the Russians and Chinese are being. Most of what I’ve heard on that score seems to be coming from the Bush administration.
Yes, they are forced into this charade because they are weak. But I don’t think it means much.
I’m also in the camp that this is an offer meant to be refused, or not complied with “enough”. The end of the article says it all:
Or try the NYTimes where they get a more direct quote on the subject from an anonymous source:
Check the box sounds exactly right to me.
I also don’t see in that Washington Post article anything that leads me to believe that China and Russia are completely on board with this. The word of a “senior administration official” on this doesn’t convince me since the direct quotes from China don’t back it up.
The attractive carrots won’t be offered and even if they are – the key word is “may”.
Sorry, don’t think this is anything but smoke and mirrors.
you are probably right. If the Iranians are smart, they will not reject the talks, and they can stall them out past the midterms.
How can they not reject the talks. Rice said they would join on the condition of Iran ceasing it’s enrichment of uranium. Maybe they are enriching uranium, and maybe not, but as a soveriegn country, they would be foolish to bend to this demand. I agree with the others here.
What’s their alternative?
First, they aren’t stupid. They watched as Saddam bent to demand after demand from the US. We all know what happened. If they give in to this, it will likely be just the first of a line of escalting demands placed upon them, that they can’t possibly meet.
Their alternative is to defend their right as a soveriegn country to develop nuclear power for peacefull purposes. They are dealing from a stronger position than Bush is, regardless of whether or not Bush goes ahead and attacks, or backs up an attack by Israel. Do you think Bush will get an authorization from the UN for the use of force? I don’t think so.
If Bush is intent on a military confrontation, it matters little how Iran deals with him, other than to make Bush look, once again, as a unilateralist madman in the eyes of the world. We are on the losing end of this.
We all know that Iran is not Iraq in a military sense. If I were them, I would be fairly confident that I could inflict a world of pain on the US in a fight. The wild card is whether or not Bush is just effing crazy enough to start dropping nukes.
If I am in charge of Iranian national security, my goal is too keep a dialogue going as long as possible. If Bush is weak right now, he should be even weaker, or even crippled after the midterms.
Under no circumstances would I contemplate surviving a military confrontation. It doesn’t matter whether they can put a world of hurt on us or not. The more damage they do, the madder we’ll get and the less restraint we’ll use.
You don’t tangle with a country with nuclear weapons that will use them in a New York Minute before they’ll pay $8.00 for a gallon of gas. Economic sabotage will just make things worse.
I don’t see any peaceful way out of this impasse that doesn’t involve Iran agreeing to stop research of uranium enrichment. They can do it now, and have talks, and string things along until we can put in a saner and less beliggerent administration, or they can refuse talks and give the UN little choice but to start cracking down on them.
ouch!
that pretty much sums it up…
definitely the textbite of the day, imo.
i wish i were as sanguine as you about the inevitability of the iranians backing down, booman, i really do…
presumption of sanity until proven different, i guess.
cool it wingnuts, iran getting nukes is not the end of the ‘western’ world, your reaction may very well be!
I have to agree with everything you’ve said here, but…
do you see any situation where Bush will be satisfied short of attacking them in one form or another, no matter what the Iranians do? These are the same arguments that were used against Iraq. They will be attacked regardless. That’s my opinion. So, faced with that near certainty, I would rather defend myself on principle and lose, than to capitulate to someone who intends to take me out anyway.
I doubt that Bush is unaware of the time frame he is dealing with here. And I’m pretty sure they understand that the longer this goes on, the weaker they are.
See, I just believe that Bush will attack regardless. That pretty much clears the table for me, if I’m Iran, to stand my ground.
I took your position on Iraq. I was so certain that we would invade Iraq that I didn’t focus on trying to stop it, as it was pointless. I argued with many people that we were going to war, and that it looked like the war could be a complete catastrophe for our nation. Therefore, the best thing to do would be to get the international cover of the UN, build as big a coalition as possible and maybe we could avoid being isolated, with no allies, and considered war criminals by more than half the world. Maybe my worst fears about Iraq could be averted if the international community was committed to rebuilding it. But, we were going to war regardless. It was a terrible place to be philosophically. I thought the Bushes were insane, that their argument for invading was dishonest and ineffectual. And that there was no good reason for our allies to back them up.
This time, things are different. Iran is not inevitable, in my opinion, because the world has seen Iraq. Everyone, including retired generals, is pushing back this time. Republican senators are pushing back. So, no, I don’t see this one as inevitable, and therefore I think we should encourage talks and other face-saving ways for Bush and Cheney to back down.
If I am in charge of Iranian national security, my goal is too keep a dialogue going as long as possible.
Sure. But I agree with supersoling. They aren’t going to agree to Bush’s terms for the ultimate dialogue. The dialogue that they will drag out will be over the terms of the ultimate dialogue — just like North Korea does.
Maybe they will write yet another 18 page letter that requires intense reading between the lines. It took the Bushies 2 weeks to respond to that letter — by coming up with this plan and making it look like their own idea.
And if Iran is really smart they’ll ask the Chinese to deliver and interpret the next 18 page letter — which will require yet more reading between the lines to figure out what the Chinese are really saying about what Iran is saying.
The ultimate beauty of eastern diplomacy is the ability to keep a dialogue going without saying much. Of course this will drive the Bushies crazy. And they will lose patience. Iran can only hope that this strategy will play with the rest of the western world — who really don’t want to see us bomb Iran.
Yeah, what MaryB said :o)
The offer to Iran was both internal politics, to appease Congressional Republicans who wanted direct talks, and external politics, to appease the Chinese and Russians.
The strategy will work on Congress, but not on the Russians and Chinese — neither will support sanctions or military action, period.
So where does this leave Bush? The UN won’t bail him out by approving sanctions; and there are no allies with the stomach for another war.
So, can Bush go to war alone?
I say no, unless . . . where is the Iran/9-11 card? This is the only argument they have left. Many forget that it was not just the WMD issue that worked with Iraq, it was the vaguely worded accusations that appeared to tie Iraq with 9-11 — worded vaguely enough that they could be denied, yet repeated over and over again until many Americans were convinced Saddam was behind the 9-11 hijackings. Using WMD was not enough with Iraq — and it won’t be enough with Iran either.
Its a set up to lend justification for a bombing. Not an invasion. The Bushies really are huge idiots. Unfortuantely so are the majority of humanity, including the Iranian leaders.
Note to Supersoling: The Iranian military is as inept as the Iraqis, maybe more so.
Note to Booman: whatever impact the blogosphere has on the national agenda, its is far, far less than generally assumed by the blogospherists themselves.
With the noted exception of MSOC, and that is mostly because she is hollywood telegenic and determined to be a star of some sort.
You may be right, but I fail to see how it matters. We’re getting our asses handed to us in Iraq right now. And I think a large part of the resistance there is Iranian backed. Iran, inept as it might be militarily is a far bigger country, with a military that hasn’t been defeated and dismantled twice in the last decade and a half like Iraq’s was. Taking on Iran will be now easy undertaking.
and Iran is a country with much tougher terrain. Not that terrain will matter if it’s limited to an air war — or so Rumsfeld will think.
we will be greeted as liberators with flowers and cheers in a parade through that rough terrain
well there you go. that settles it, everybody likes parades and flowers.
There will be no invasion. Maybe a bombing or two. We are far too busy fending off the imaginary brown invasion from south of the border to worry about Iran.
Plus, the Bush poll numbers wont cover another “war on Terror.”
Sounds more like a job for the Israeli air force.
Here we go, next round…
Iran rejects talks
Though Bush has said he is committed to a diplomatic solution in the standoff with Iran, he “is not going to take any of his options off the table, temporarily or otherwise,” Rice said in response to a question about whether a military option remains a possibility.
I think I’ve heard this tune before.
We won’t negotiate about the Iranian nation’s natural nuclear rights, but we are prepared, within a defined, just framework and without any discrimination, to hold a dialogue about common concerns
Now we just have to define a “just framework” that doesn’t involve “any discrimination.” That could take, I don’t know … months?
Been writing a blog post on this issue, and so far my conclusion is that these talks are a sham or pretext that will just be a bump in the road as bush proceeds with original plans of military action and/or regime change.
Regarding blog impact on public opinion:
The same audience share, i’d say we are all having an impact!
I agree with many here that this so-calle doffer for direct talks is just hot air designed to create a pretext for diplomatic “failure”.
But, more importantly to me is the question; From whom is Rice taking her directions. Clearly it seems she’s not being directed by the Cheney/Pentagon/PNAC crowd, else this business of feigning willingness to talk would not have come about the way it has, even as a “we have to check off the ‘direct talks’ box” that was mentioned above.
No! I think other forces are challenging the neocons for dominance in the Bush regime, and this isone more example of that group of peoples continued climb towards the eventual driving of the neocons from power.