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The US Presidential Candidates on Iran
Voice of America - Report Section
Aug 9, 2004
Recent developments in Iran have led some political observers to suggest that country may present the main foreign policy challenge for whoever wins the U.S. presidential election in November 2004. The incumbent, President George W. Bush, and his challenger, Senator John Kerry, both have expressed concern over Iran’s plans to develop nuclear weapons, but as VOA’s Serena Parker reports, each man has different views on how the Iran problem should be tackled.
The U.S. State Department has long included Iran on its list of nations that sponsor terrorism. More recently, the commission investigating the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 reported that eight of the 19 hijackers traveled through Iran from Afghanistan without having their passports stamped, something Tehran does not deny.
President Bush says although the Central Intelligence Agency has not discovered any links between Iran and the attacks of September 11, U.S. intelligence agencies will continue to investigate. “As to direct connections to September 11 we’re digging into the facts to determine if there was one,” he says.
The President added that he has long expressed concern about Iran, a country he has accused, along with Iraq and North Korea, of belonging to an “axis of evil.” Mr. Bush said Iran’s government denies basic human rights to its own people while sponsoring terrorism attacks in other parts of the world.
“I have made it clear that if the Iranians would like to have better relations with the United States, there are some things they must do,” he says. “For example, they are harboring Al Qaeda leadership there, and I have indicated that they must be turned over to their respective countries. Secondly, they’ve got a nuclear weapons program that they need to dismantle, and we’re working with other countries to encourage them to do so. And thirdly, they’ve got to stop funding terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah that create great dangers in parts of the world.”
Although President Bush has clearly and repeatedly expressed his concerns about Iran, some analysts say his administration has yet to formulate a coherent policy towards the ruling mullahs. However, Michael Ledeen, resident scholar at American Enterprise Institute, believes that will change if President Bush is re-elected in November.
“They’ve left clues and hints suggesting that they might be much more vigorous toward Iran,” he says. “They’re clearly very angry at the games that Iran has played with their nuclear program. And they’ve given every reason to think that they might even consider doing something dramatic.”
Michael Ledeen says there are two kinds of “dramatic” initiatives President Bush – or any American government – might consider. One would be military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities. Mr. Ledeen says the other would be to dramatically increase support for the democratic opposition in Iran and do what was done for Solidarity in Poland and the anti-Milosevic movement in Yugoslavia.
The Democratic challenger, Senator John Kerry, has also indicated concern about the Iranian atomic program and the country’s links to terrorism.
“Iran presents an obvious and especially difficult challenge,” he says. “Our relations there are burdened by a generation of distrust, by the threat of nuclear proliferation and by reports of al Qaeda forces in that country, including the leadership responsible for the May 13, 2003 bombings in Saudi Arabia.”
Senator Kerry says if he is elected President, his administration’s approach to Iran will be different from that of President Bush. “The Bush administration stubbornly refuses to conduct a realistic, non-confrontational policy with Iran, even where it may be possible, as we witnessed most recently in the British-French-German initiative,” he says. “As president, I will be prepared early on to explore areas of mutual interest with Iran, just as I was prepared to normalize relations with Vietnam a decade ago. Iran has long expressed an interest in cooperating against the Afghan drug trade. That is one starting point.”
Last year, Britain, France and Germany announced they had brokered an agreement with Tehran under which Iran agreed to suspend its uranium enrichment operations and allow inspectors from the U-N’s nuclear watchdog into the country. In spite of that, Iran has failed to fully cooperate and recently announced that it had resumed construction of centrifuges that are capable of producing material for a nuclear bomb.
President Bush and Senator Kerry are adamant that a nuclear-armed Iran is unacceptable, but neither man has yet to explain to the American public what his Administration would do if international pressure fails and Iran continues to develop its nuclear weapons program.
http://www.daneshjoo.org/generalnews/article/publish/article_7550.shtml
Kidnapped Iranian diplomat "alive and well": FM
Fereydoun Jahani, the Iranian diplomat kidnapped in Iraq last week, is "alive and well", the official IRNA news agency quoted Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi as saying on Monday.
Kharrazi said that Iran would make utmost effort to have Jahani freed.
A video released earlier on Sunday by Arab-language Al-Arabiya TV channel showed Jihani along with nine forms of his identification, his passport and a business card.
Claiming themselves as "Islamic Army in Iraq", the kidnappers accused Jihani of fanning sectarian clashes in Iraq, warning Iran not to interfere in Iraq's affairs, according to Al-Arabiya.
Iran's state television and IRNA later said that the Iranian embassy in Baghdad had confirmed Jahani was kidnapped.
However, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid-Reza Asefi refused to comment on whether Jahani were kidnapped at a press conference held Sunday night.
He said that Jahani had "disappeared" and there was no reliable information at present about the motives behind this action.
Iran, a Shiite Muslim country with close ties to Iraq's majority Shiite population, is blamed for supporting Iraq's Shiite political parties with money and intelligence, an allegation strongly denied by the Iranian government.
Jihani became the second senior diplomat kidnapped in Iraq inrecent weeks.
An Egyptian diplomat called Mohammed Mamdouh Helmi Qutb was abducted on July 23 and later freed on July 26.
More than 70 foreigners have been seized in Iraq in recent months by insurgents who want to force coalition members to pullout their forces and foreign companies to stop supporting coalition troops.
http://english1.peopledaily.com.cn/200408/10/eng20040810_152374.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,12858,1279824,00.html
Diplomacy sidelined as US targets Iran
Simon Tisdall
Tuesday August 10, 2004
The Guardian
The US charge sheet against Iran is lengthening almost by the day, presaging destabilising confrontations this autumn and maybe a pre-election October surprise.
The Bush administration is piling on the pressure over Iran's alleged nuclear weapons programme. It maintains Tehran's decision to resume building uranium centrifuges wrecked a long-running EU-led dialogue and is proof of bad faith.
The US will ask a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency on September 13 to declare Iran in breach of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, a prelude to seeking punitive UN sanctions.
Iran's insistence that it seeks nuclear power, not weapons, is scoffed at in Washington. John Bolton, the hawkish US under-secretary of state for arms control, says there is no doubt what Tehran is up to. He has hinted at using military force should the UN fail to act. "The US and its allies must be willing to deploy more robust techniques" to halt nuclear proliferation, including "the disruption of procurement networks, sanctions and other means". No option was ruled out, he said last year.
Last month in Tokyo, Mr Bolton upped the ante again, accusing Iran of collaborating with North Korea on ballistic missiles.
Israel, Washington's ally, has also been stoking the fire. It is suggested there that if the west fails to act against Iran in timely fashion, Israel could strike pre-emptively as it did against Iraq's nuclear facilities in 1981, although whether it has the capability to launch effective strikes is uncertain.
The US has been pushing other countries to impose de facto punishment on Iran. Japan has been asked to cancel its $2bn (£1.086bn) investment in the Azadegan oilfield and Washington has urged Russia to halt the construction of a civilian reactor.
Condoleezza Rice, the US national security adviser, said at the weekend there was a new international willingness to confront Tehran, but declined to rule out unilateral action if others did not go along.
That will fuel speculation in Tehran and elsewhere that the Bush administration may resort to force, with or without Israel, ahead of November's election. Options include "surgical strikes" or covert action by special forces.
Such a move would be a high-risk gamble for George Bush. After the WMD fiasco, there would inevitably be questions about the accuracy of US intelligence. In the past Iran has vowed to retaliate. Although it is unclear how it might do so, the mood in Tehran has hardened since the conservatives won fiddled elections last winter.
"I think we've finally got the world community to a place, the IAEA to a place, that it is worried and suspicious," Ms Rice said in one of a string of interviews with CNN, Fox News and NBC television. She vowed to aim some "very tough resolutions" at Iran this autumn. "Iran will either be isolated or it will submit," she said.
Officials in London say she exaggerated the degree of unanimity on what to do next. Britain, France and Germany are the EU troika which has pursued a policy of "critical engagement" with Iran, despite US misgivings.
Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, has invested considerably in resolving the issue, travelling to Tehran on several occasions. A diplomatic collapse would be a blow.
"There has been no such decision at all," a Foreign Office spokesman said yesterday of US efforts to take the dispute to the security council. "The dialogue [with Iran] is ongoing and the government still believes that negotiation is the way forward at this stage." But Britain is in danger of being dragged down a path of confrontation that it does not want to travel.
Nuclear weapons are not Washington's only worry. The US charges include Iran's perceived meddling in Iraq, where the blame for the surge in Shia unrest is laid partly at Tehran's door. It also takes exception to Iran's ambiguous attitude to al-Qaida and Tehran's backing for anti-Israeli groups such as Hizbullah. The recent Kean report on 9/11 detailed unofficial links between some of the al-Qaida hijackers and Iran.
Investigations into other terrorist attacks since 9/11, including this year's Madrid bombings and failed plots in Paris and London, point to an Iran connection, though the extent of any government involvement is obscure.
While the Bush administration is set on a tougher line there is no consensus even in Washington on what to do.
A report by the independent Council on Foreign Relations says since Iran is not likely to implode any time soon, the US should start talking.
"Iran is experiencing a gradual process of internal change," the report says. "The urgency of US concerns about Iran and the region mandate that the US deal with the current regime [through] a compartmentalised process of dialogue, confidence building and incremental engagement."
That suggestion was mocked by a Wall Street Journal editorial as "appeasement". Hawks say the nuclear issue is too urgent to brook further delay. And therein lies the rub. Bringing Iran in from the cold is a time-consuming business. But the Bush administration, as usual, is in a hurry.