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February 23, 2008 at 13:15:11

Diplomacy for War

by Daniel Pourkesali     Page 1 of 1 page(s)

www.opednews.com

 

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Reuel Marc Gerecht's opinion piece in the New York Times yesterday titled 'Attack Iran, With Words' advocating diplomacy with Iran may have taken some readers including this one by surprise given his resident fellowship credentials at the American Enterprise Institute. Not that there is anything new and earth shattering about the concept of engaging in dialog in order to resolve differences between nations. But is it possible that these people finally got a whiff of what the rest of us call 'Common Sense'?

Well, after reading the article the answer is still a resounding 'no'.

The current administration has paid a lot of lip service in the last few years to the notion of a diplomatic solution while continuously preparing public opinion through media spin on a path toward war with Iran. But that was three months and one very damaging National Intelligence Estimate ago. Strangely enough, the new neo-con strategy seems to be calling for real diplomacy not for the sake of preserving peace but rather to revive the vanishing and increasingly unpopular idea of using military force because as Gerecht puts it "the current approach isn't working". He goes on to suggest that "we must find a way to restore the resolve of all those parties [China, Russia, Germany, Britain and France] to hit Iran with a tsunami of sanctions if we are to diminish the victorious esprit in Tehran and the centrifuge production at Natanz."

And as for those "praying for the clerical regime to do something stupid" he dashes such hopes by stating that "[Iranians] will likely play it sufficiently cool to make it difficult for the United States to strike them pre-emptively. Thus the best reason to offer to begin talks with Tehran is that the regime will almost certainly refuse any offer to normalize relations."

So his recommendations for talking is not for the old cockamamie idea of engaging Iran in a wide-ranging dialog that would recognize its regional role or address any security or geo-strategic concerns, but "something that must be checked off before the next president could unleash the Air Force and the Navy."

And if you still have any doubt as to what he is exactly suggesting, he spells it out in black and white for you: "To make the threat of force against clerical Iran credible again, there needs to be a consensus among far more Democrats and Republicans that a nuclear-armed Iran is intolerable. If the White House tried more energetically to find a diplomatic solution to the nuclear threat, if it demonstrated that it had reached out to Iranian "pragmatists" and "moderates," and that again no one responded, then the military option would likely become convincing to more Americans."

Well this writer is certainly convinced. After 6 years of saber rattling and refusing to talk, except for making threats, moving a third of the U.S. naval arsenal to the Persian Gulf and accusing Iran of helping Iraqi insurgents without presenting a shred of evidence, who knew diplomacy could be such a powerful tool for war.

 

www.CampaignIran.org

Daniel M Pourkesali is an Engineer with an Aerospace company in Northern Virginia specializing in development and manufacturing of flight dynamics, engineering and control systems. He is also a columnist and board member of the Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran (CASMII), National Iranian American Council (NIAC), Persian Gulf Organization, and Iranians for International Cooperation.

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Concerned American Citizen
Mark WattersonConcerned American Citizen

Please contribute to the well-being of America and boycott

the New York Times! 

Reuel Marc Gerecht is your typical warmongering Neo-con lunatic. His job is to propagandize for the purpose of annihilating an entire people (again). Like most of the other Neo-cons, his loyalties lie with Israel. But it is the USA that has the power to carry out their agenda...

by Mark Watterson (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 76 comments) on Sunday, February 24, 2008 at 11:05:10 AM
 


A 'senior' world citizen concerned about how badly our shared domicile is being ravaged by imperialists, dominionists, neo-cons and evangelists.
syed mahdiA 'senior' world citizen concerned about how badly our shared domicile is being ravaged by imperialists, dominionists, neo-cons and evangelists.

"Diplomacy for War" by Daniel Pourskali

Daniel is right and so is the commentator before me but both have not or perhaps dare not share with us what is so obvious. The decision on 'attack on Iran',that is, to be or not to be, depends entirely on Israel. As planned, promoted and sold to the US, Israel would carry out the initial attack. Through the NYT article, the Israeli Govt and its supporters & funders in the US are smartly conveying that they are not ready now or even unwilling to do so. They must have calculated that the risks for them might be extremely costly if not down right disastrous, coming in the wake of their dumb 2006 misadventure in South Lebanon. Then also there is their on going dumber misadventure in Gaza. Most importantly Israel's blindest supporter is in his last year at the White House and the Israeli 'shekels' and the AIPAC/ Mainstream Media shackles on US Politics are also not working as well as before. Even those who would not have dared to criticize Israel & Zionism yesterday are doing so now without fear of being branded as Anti-Semitic felons, thanks to the braves in Iraq who have managed to  stem the expansion of the American Empire with whatever crude weapons they could muster for their resistance, including their own wired up bodies, which bodies and the lives in them have been rendered worthless by the Yankee Hordes, their Iraqi Viches & their Blackwater goons!   

by syed mahdi (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 125 comments) on Sunday, February 24, 2008 at 3:17:48 PM
 

 

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