Want to know? Kissinger Iran

LONDON Former secretary of state Henry Kissinger said the U.S. should negotiate directly with Iran over its nuclear program and other bilateral issues.

The Bush administration’s approach to Iran tracks the advice of a certain secretary of State with Vietnam experience.

His Iran remarks roughly come between minutes 3:30 and 7:30 of the recording.

Henry Kissinger has thrown his shoulder behind the so-called “push-back” strategy being applied to the new US National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s nuclear program.

Kissinger is reputed to be among US Presidential candidate John McCain’s advisers, and he remains an icon among “realist” analytical circles.

Specifically, he’s even given hawks in the lame-duck George W Bush administration a helping hand in countering the backlash sparked by the NIE’s most inconvenient finding that Iran is not currently pursuing a nuclear weapons program.

And judging from the moves George W. Bush has been making lately, the president appears to be following the old meister’s advice on Iran.

And he said that when it came to Iran’s nuclear program—which has provoked existential fears of attack in Israel and deep worry in the Arab capitals over a perceived bid for Iranian dominance—he was still pushing for a diplomatic solution.

“If Iran is a nation and wants to be respected as a nation we will and must find a way to coexist with it,” he said.

He wields tremendous influence on Washington’s foreign decision-making in light of his long track record within the American foreign policy machine.

He’s a proponent of post-Cold War, post-hegemonic America and, equally, a principal architect of American primacy in the new global milieu.

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.

Fed up with Iran’s recalcitrance in talks to curb its nuclear program, and reports of Iran’s alleged complicity in attacks inside Iraq, the Bush administration is engaged in diplomacy of truly Kissingerian complexity.

In his recent book “State of Denial,” Bob Woodward called the aging diplomat a “powerful, largely invisible influence” in the administration, and the outside adviser whom Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney consulted more than any other.

Kissinger, for example, sticks to the stale, if safe line that Israel cannot negotiate with Hamas until Hamas recognizes Israel’s right to exist.

Kissinger presumably finds Iran today to be more of a “nation,” one with which we can be fellow “realists.”

Perhaps Kissinger is merely recognizing that neither Bush nor Rice are the least bit likely to meet with the Iranians this year, and granting them a fig leaf.

The Bush administration pursues a policy of diplomatic pressure on Iran at the United Nations and unilateral sanctions to weaken its access to the international banking system.

“One should be prepared to negotiate, and I think we should be prepared to negotiate about Iran,” Kissinger, who brokered the end of the 1973 Yom Kippur war and peace talks with the North Vietnamese, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television.

Yet the US can talk to Iran, never mind the incendiary remarks, shall we say, of its current President about Israel’s legitimacy.

Among them is the fact that Iran is not blind to the overwhelming fire power of the US, as well as the fact that short of having a “second strike capability” it is rather futile to think of a nuclear shield against the American threat.

Iran’s leadership envisions a nation that pioneers “ethical foreign policy” and seeks a revised and more just global order, away from the present ossified hierarchies, including the nuclear hierarchy that, in the words of Iran’s president, reflects a past era.

Iran maintains its enrichment of uranium is needed for nuclear power, while the U.S. claims the project is cover for weapons development.

I’ll leave it to Helena Cobban or other sharp jwn readers to comment on the rest of his remarks.

In that episode, Iraqis, wearing uniforms similar to those of American troops, killed five U.S. soldiers—allegedly with Tehran’s help.

In an extraordinary series of moves, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other U.S. officials have been seeking to create a united front of Sunni Arab regimes and Israel against Shiite Iran as part of an aggressive new approach to Tehran.

In his Washington Post opinion piece Kissinger accepts as verified fact the 2007 NIE’s claim that Iran halted a secret nuclear weapons program in 2003, in response to the US’s post-September 11, 2001, military offensives in the region.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced a few days ago that Admiral William Fallon would be stepping down as head of Central Command in the Persian Gulf, provoking criticism that Bush won’t tolerate dissent and feeding speculation his Iran policy could become more confrontational.

Kissinger’s bottom line: don’t negotiate with Tehran until you’ve realigned the forces in the Middle East so that you’re negotiating from a position of strength.

Neoconservative godfathers, from Bernard Lewis to Norman Podhoretz have been advancing the fallacious argument that Iran remains an irrational “cause.”