Posted on 03/01/2009 2:27:47 PM PST by lewisglad
In a brief statement Sunday, March 1, US film actress Annette Bening, in Tehran with a Hollywood delegation, said: "I hope we can be a bridge to open a dialogue between out two countries, confirming DEBKAfile's report that president Barack Obama had launched his bid for talks with Iran with a piece of "Hollywood diplomacy" 38 years after Richard Nixon opened the door to China with a ping-pong team.
Wearing a headscarf, the actress' remark followed the demand by president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's art adviser that Hollywood apologize for 30 years of "insults and slanders" about Iranians in their films. Javad Shamaghdari cited the 2007 war epic "300" for its portrayal of their ancestors as "bloodthirsty" in the Greco-Persian wars and "The Wrestler" for the tearing of the Iranian flag in by the 2009 Oscar nominee Mickey Rourke.
"We will believe in Obama's policy of change when we see change in Hollywood too," said the Iranian official as the Hollywood delegation began a three-day workshop at Tehran's museum of cinema.
DEBKAfile reported Saturday, Feb. 28:
Thirty-eight years ago, a ping pong team sent by US president Richard Nixon to Beijing opened the door to Communist China. February 27, 2009, president Barack Obama launched his bid for dialogue with Iran with an Academy of Motion Pictures, Arts and Sciences delegation from Hollywood. It is led by the actress Annette Bening, AMPAS president Sid Ganis and his predecessor Frank Pierson who flew in just after the Oscar award ceremony. Visiting in the framework of "US-Iranian culture exchanges," they will hold talks in Tehran Saturday and Sunday.
DEBKAfile's Washington sources note that this visit coincides with three relevant events:
1. Friday, Obama announce that the bulk of US forces will be out of Iraq by Aug. 2010 leaving only 50,000 in place. This meets Tehran's objections to the presence of large-scale US forces in Iraq.
2. He calmed Iran's fears on another score when he stated in a PBS interview: "One of the things that I think we have to communicate in Afghanistan is that we have no interest or aspiration to be there over the long term."
3. The US president had his reply from Tehran in the former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rasanjani's Friday sermon, when he extended his government's first overt invitation for talks on the nuclear issue: "…we don't make false promises," said the Iranian strongman. "Therefore I declare that Iran's nuclear plan is not to build weapons …and we are ready to prove it in negotiations."
For DEBKAfile's analysis of this important sermon click HERE
DEBKAfile notes that the Hollywood delegation will be staying in Iran for a week, longer than any US emissary in the 30 years since the Islamic Republic's founder Ayatollah Khomeini branded America "Big Satan." In 1985, Ronald Reagan sent his national security adviser Robert McFarlane along with Oliver North and an Israeli, the late Amiram Nir, to Tehran on a mission later dubbed Irangate. They carried a Bible and a chocolate cake for the Ayatollah, which did not save them from being thrown out of the Iran after a couple of days without being received by Iranian officials.
Iran offers Obama nuclear negotiations – with a catch
DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis
Iranian strongman Akbar Hashemi Rasanjani sets a trap
The Friday sermon delivered by former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rasanjani in Tehran on Feb. 27 embodied an incentive and a catch for US president Barack Obama, condemned Israel and threatened Russia.
He said: “…we don’t make false promises. Therefore I declare that Iran’s nuclear plan is not to build weapons… and we are ready to prove it in negotiations.” Indicating Israel, he said: “’You are planting a false notion in public minds.” Addressing the Russians, he said bluntly that “…even if they don’t’ deal with the [Bushehr] project, we can finish it on our own.”
The Iranian leader closest to supreme ruler Ayatollah Ali Khameni had in fact issued Tehran’s first explicit invitation to Obama to open direct negotiations which promised an Iranian pledge not to build a nuclear weapon.
That was the incentive. But the catch implicit in his message was picked up by DEBKAfile’s Iranian experts: He was saying in typical Rafsanjani shorthand that Tehran was willing to kick off the bargaining with a pledge not to develop on nuclear weapons, provided Washington agreed to the Islamic Republic retaining the capability to do so.
This formula would reduce the Tehran-Washington talks to haggling over where to place the cutoff point in the Iranian program.
The Iranians would demand to be allowed leeway for completing a bomb within four to six months; the Americans would likely insist on halting the program two to-three years short of a military capability, and the negotiations would end in a compromise.
Rafsanjani employed this verbal tactic on the strength of the information about the Obama administration’s position gained from informal preliminary Iranian-US contacts in the last two months. Tehran believes the US president needs Iran’s help in the Afghan War and would therefore be flexible in his dialogue with Iran. They calculate that he would go an extra mile for the sake of showing he had managed to arrest the Islamic Republic’s march toward a nuclear weapon.
Israel is adamantly opposed to this formula, certain Tehran will use it as a blind to forge ahead secretly until its clandestine bomb and warhead projects are close to assembly at short notice.
Thursday, Feb. 25, outgoing Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert commented on the launch of Iran’s first nuclear reactor at Bushehr: “We have deployed enormous efforts to reinforce our deterrence capacity. Israel will be able to defend itself …against all threats, against all enemies. I cannot say more but believe me, I know what I’m talking about.”
Without referring to Israel by name, Rafsanjani responded by saying: “You are planting a false notion in public minds,” in reference to the “unthinking words of the main enemies of the Islamic revolution.”
But Russia, which had delayed completing the Bushehr reactor for 10 years on one pretext or another, was warned specifically: “The Russians and others should know that …even if they don’t deal with the project, we can complete it on our own. But they must fulfill their promise.”
It’s good to know Annette Benning is representing me in Tehran.
This is proof the Left is clincal.
Wasn’t she campaigning for anti-Prop. 8?
They kill them over there.
Our official ambassadors to Iran are movie stars?
“Team America” was incredibly prescient.
Talk about arrogance.
Do these people in Washington not understand how fundie-Muslins see women? they cannot send a woman to do any kind of fence mending! (If that could or should even be done in the first place!)
Does Hillary! know that Annette is usurping her power?
Watch your back, Mrs. Beatty...
Annette is taking the day off from all the diplomacy to shop for burguas.
Oh yeah! Movie stars! That will bring them around!
Annette Benning doesn’t have the brains God gave a goat.
She’s a liberal twit whthout a clue.
But since I'm not an enemy of America, I won't get one.
There was a VERY small window of time back when where she was actually cute, For about 6 months or so.
Then she instantly hit the brick wall or something and has been a hag ever since.
This generation’s Hanoi Jane.
Just great....
Alfre Woodard?
But she still has great legs! MM-MMM!
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