Yesterday, Henry Kissinger once again expressed support for opening direct talks with Iran over its nuclear enrichment program, without preconditions. He did that at a forum where four other Secretaries of State– Jim Baker, Colin Powell, Madeleine Albright, and Warren Christopher– also expressed support for such talks.
Let’s hope Kissinger’s message gets home loud and clear to President and Vice-President, whose offices are just a stone’s throw from where he was speaking, at George Washington University. After all, when they invaded Iraq they were taking his advice to do that. So let’s hope that when his advice is far, far saner than that earlier piece of grave mis-advice, they also pay him good heed.
Kissinger’s espousal of talking to, rather than bombing, Iran is not new. Back in March, Bloomberg reported this:
- “One should be prepared to negotiate, and I think we should be prepared to negotiate about Iran,” Kissinger… said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. Asked whether he meant the U.S. should hold direct talks, Kissinger, 84, responded: “Yes, I think we should.”
There has been no response so far from Iran, he said.
“I’ve been in semi-private, totally private talks with Iranians,” he said. “They’ve had put before them approaches that with a little flexibility on their part would, in my view, surely lead to negotiations.” He didn’t elaborate on who was engaged in the talks.
… There has been no direct contact between the U.S. and Iran since the 1979 Iranian revolution, except for talks in Baghdad on Iraqi security between their ambassadors or technical experts.
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said March 9 that Iran wouldn’t engage with the U.S. until President Bush’s successor is elected.
Interesting, huh?
At yesterday’s forum at GWU, Colin Powell also notably said he hadn’t yet decided who to support in the presidential race.
Time was, an endorsement from Powell would have meant a huge amount to Obama. However, Powell’s pathetic, weak-kneed performance during Bush-43’s first term has considerably dented his political “brand.”
Pity. He’s probably a nice man.
I think it is a very remarkable fact that when the US stopped its bellicose language against Iran in June, and sent Burns to meet the Iranians in Geneva (even if nothing came out of the meeting), only very shortly afterwards the oil price started dropping, and has continued to do so till this day. Of course, they said it was speculators pushing up oil prices, but I think the lesson of the conjunction was not lost on Washington. Ever since then we’ve been having a trickle of statements from US senior figures talking about negotiation and acceptance rather than war. These remarks of Kissinger’s are just another case. I would say he is following the message, rather than launching it.