Posted on 12/02/2003 1:11:52 PM PST by faludeh_shirazi
By ELI LAKE Staff Reporter of the Sun
The Pentagon’s contacts with opponents of the Iranian regime have all but dried up after elaborate procedures were introduced requiring such meetings to be cleared at the top levels of the Defense Department.
Some advocatyes of a hard line against Iran say that the new restrictions have meant less encouragement from America for those seeking to spread freedom and democracy in Iran. They also voice concern that the rules have prevented America from getting valuable information about Iran’s support for terrorism and its effort to build a nuclear bomb.
The restrictions on Pentagon meetings have also given the State Department, which has pushed to engage Iran, an upper hand in the interagency debate over policy toward the Islamic Republic.
Despite President Bush’s decision to include Iran in the “axis of evil” in his 2002 State of the Union address and his public statements of support for freedom there, the mullahs who run Iran have seen little follow through from his administration in terms of actual support for indigenous democrats.
The Iranian government has been courted as a partner in rebuilding neighboring Iraq, showing up at an international conference of donors in Madrid in October and signing a series of diplomatic agreements with the American-appointed Iraqi Governing Council in November.
In the past two years, the Pentagon’s analysts have met with a raft of Iranians, who in some cases have provided valuable information on their country’s links to terrorism and pursuit of weapons of mass destruction.
Such figures include a former Iranian linguistics professor who advocates on behalf of Iran’s Azeri population, Mahmud Ali Cheragani; Reza Pahlavi, the son of the late Shah of Iran; and a Europe-based businessman who played a role in the Iran-Contra affair, Manucher Ghorbanifar. The last meeting between senior Pentagon officials and a major Iranian figure was in September, when Ayatollah Khomeini’s grandson, Hossein Khomeini, met with the assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, Peter Rodman.
It was a meeting with Mr. Ghorbanifar that prompted Defense Secretary Rumsfeld to impose the new restrictions, a senior Defense Department official said.
In August, Mr. Rumsfeld issued new policy guidance on meetings between Pentagon civilians and Iranian figures that required all meetings that might be construed as controversial or counter to American policy to be cleared with the undersecretary of defense for policy, Douglas Feith.
The effect of the guidance has been chilling. Since mid-October, the Pentagon’s analysts on Iran have had no meetings with Iranian democrats, and there are none planned.
“We wanted to make sure things were authorized and that we approved these meetings ahead of time,” a senior Defense Department official told The New York Sun yesterday.
While this official emphasized that the policy was not meant to curtail contact with “decent people in the Iranian opposition,” he also said it was understandable that analysts would be cautious.
According to this senior official, the new policy was drafted in August. “The word went down to everyone: If you are going to meet with anyone you have to check,” the official said.
Democrats on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence had seized on the meeting with Mr. Ghorbanifar and opened a new line of inquiry into any and all contacts between Iranians and Pentagon officials. “The committee is interested in looking at any contacts between Iranians and Pentagon officials,” a spokesperson for Senator Rockefeller, the top Democrat on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Wendy Morigi, told the Sun.
The Democrats on the intelligence committee were sharply criticized last month after a memo leaked that appeared to show them plotting the course of an investigation into intelligence on Iraq in a way to maximize political gain.The intelligence committee had tended to operate on a basis that emphasized bipartisan cooperation.
A source familiar with the details of the Ghorbanifar meeting and subsequent congressional inquiries told the Sun yesterday that the majority staff on the intelligence committee does not view the events with the same concern as Democrats.
“As of yet, no inappropriate conduct has been found in connection with the Ghorbanifar meetings, and if any questions have been raised, the question has been, why haven’t we more aggressively followed up in getting this type of information from these types of individuals and others?” this source said.
The inquiries from Mr. Rockefeller’s committee began in October, and it was around this time the August guidance was reiterated to Pentagon officials.
One administration official said word traveled quickly. “It went down the chain of command to cease and desist all contacts with the Iranian Diaspora,” the official said.
Senator Brownback, a Republican of Kansas, said he thought now was the time to increase contact with Iranian Democrats. “My overall viewpoint is that we need to engage the Iranian Diaspora — the people who have come out of Iran, the defectors who have come out of the regime of the mullahs — and engage with them to communicate into Iran and help people organize for democracy in that country,” he said.
But with the State Department taking the lead, some activists are worried.
“The State Department has been less inclined to be in touch with prodemocracy advocates, especially those who believe in the universality of human rights and are opposed to the Islamic Republic,” an Iran scholar and human rights activist in Washington, Roya Boroumand, told the Sun.
The American Enterprise Institute’s vice president for foreign and defense policy studies, Danielle Pletka, said the new guidelines have denied the Pentagon’s analysts the ability to collect important information.
“I think information is a commodity we trade in freely in the United States. The idea that informational meetings with Iranians should be off-limits to members of our government that deal with nonproliferation and national security seems to me to be foolish in the extreme,” she said.
A very bad move!
All I can say is
AAAAGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!
Thank you.
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