Condi claims she never saw Iranian offer to recognise Israel.
One of the main reasons given for the US plans to attack Iran is that Ahmadinejad has supposedly promised "to wipe Israel off the map". This, of course, is taken by many to be a valid reason for war against a country that is said to be seeking nuclear weapons.
However, it would be much harder to push the case for war if it was discovered that Iran had sent a fax to the State Department's Near Eastern Affairs bureau around late April or early May of 2003 offering, amongst other things, to "recognise Israel".
What's a warmonger to do faced with such an inconvenience?
Well, Condi Rice has decided simply to say that she never saw this fax and has no recollection of it at all. But Flynt Leverett, a former CIA Mideast analyst and National Security Council staffer during President Bush's first term, says he put it on Condi's desk.
However, Condi claims that she missed this:"I have read about this so-called proposal from Iran," Rice told the House Foreign Affairs Committee yesterday, referring to reports in The Washington Post and other publications last year. "We had people who said, 'The Iranians want to talk to you,' lots of people who said, 'The Iranians want to talk to you.' But I think I would have noticed if the Iranians had said, 'We're ready to recognize Israel.' . . . I just don't remember ever seeing any such thing."
I think Condi would have noticed this too. Which makes her claims never to have seen it "really quite curious" as Leverett stated. One could almost suppose that these people want war.
Click title for source.
tag: Israel, Iran, Condoleezza Rice
7 comments:
President Ahmadinejad's real views are summarized on this website: ahmadinejadquotes.blogspot.com
You've sent me to that website before.
Kel,
Thanks for the link on the story of 9/11 and Israel. As for Iran, I was listening yesterday to the debate held in NYC in september by the London Review of Books around the Israel lobby and practically all participants from both sides when wuestioned about Israel's role in the war on Iraq answered that Israel actually might have preferred going against Iran first but as the Bush administration wanted to go to iraq they went along. The link to the debate is on the first page of the LRB, at the end of the right sidebar.
Condi is being the most disingenuous person in this bunch. Shame on her...
Thanks for referring me to the LRB article. I thought Tony Judt was fabulous.
And I understand that the Israelis preferred to go after Iran first, but nevertheless I would argue that they agreed to go after Iraq on the understanding that Iran and Syria were next. After all they were part of the Axis of Evil and Sharon is on the record as saying that after Iraq Bush should go into Iran.
Good post. A comment though on your link to Spencer Ackerman at TPM. He falsely states that Glenn Kessler broke the story about the Iranian offer on June 20, 2006.
Here is a piece by Gareth Porter published two weeks earlier that gives full details about the offer, which Porter says he had a copy of:
American Prospect
Even at that stage, Porter had already written about the plan several times. Here for example is an article of his from March 2006:
"Cabal" Blocked 2003 Nuclear Talks with Iran
I point this out because Porter has been doing the best reporting on the story, and his work has gone almost totally unrecognized.
Smintheus,
Thanks for the links and for correctly crediting Porter.
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