Iran End Game?

By Robert Dreyfuss

July 13, 2004

Readers of this blog know that I pay a lot of attention to Iran, and how it fits into things. So, of course, do a lot of others, from Ariel Sharon and Ahmad Chalabi to the crew of so-called “realists” in the American foreign policy establishment. The fact that one of Osama bin Laden’s bearded wonders has turned himself in to the Saudi Arabia embassy in Iran only raises the stakes in Iran a little more. Is it a sign that Iran wants to cooperate with Washington? And can they pull it off before Israel bombs their nuclear reactors?

Next week, the Council on Foreign Relations is sponsoring Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser and an apparent candidate for a post in the Kerry administration, and Robert Gates, the controversial former CIA director, in a forum to argue that it’s time for Washington to make nice with Teheran. Says CFR about its Brzezinksi-Gates task force:

This new task force finds that the government's lack of sustained engagement with Iran harms our national interests in this critical region of the world. The task force also concludes that external efforts to change the current regime are not likely to succeed, and urges the United States to pursue direct dialogue with Tehran on specific areas of mutual concern.

That’s a conclusion not likely to warm that hearts of the anti-Iran neocons. With Bush waging an ostentatious jihad against the Axis of Evil (one down, two to go) from Tripoli  to Tashkent, any sign of openness toward Iran ’s mullahdom won’t be taken lying down.

Meanwhile, from Iran ’s news agency IRNA comes confirmation that Iran is going back to the negotiating table with the European Big Three , whose talks with Iran are viewed with a mixture of envy and suspicion by the Bush administration:

Iranian negotiations with the three European partners on its national nuclear program will resume late July, the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) said on Tuesday.The SNSC said that "Sharq Persian daily" has made a mistake in carrying an interview with the television by Secretary of SNSC Hassan Rowhani saying that no negotiations will be held with the big three European states.

Iran signed Tehran Declaration with foreign ministers of France, Britain and Germany on October 21, 2003, according to which the three European partners undertook to supply Iran with nuclear technology in return for Iranian decision to sign up to additional protocol to Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) which granted intrusive inspection of nuclear sites by inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Iran ’s ace-in-the-hole , of course, is the fact that it can make life in Iraq a nightmare for the Bushies. Well, okay, it’s already a nightmare. But Iran can make it a lot worse. And, as I’ve been saying for a while, that might be exactly what Sharon, and the neocons, want. What better way to catapult the neocons back into the center of things than a handy little crisis with Iran?