Jordan Promoting U.S.-Iran Contacts
Quid Pro Quo on Al Qaeda Sought
By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 7, 2003
Jordan's King Abdullah is quietly trying to broker a deal that would lead Tehran to surrender about 70 al Qaeda operatives, including the son of Osama bin Laden, in exchange for U.S. action on the largest Iranian opposition group now based in Iraq, according to U.S. and Middle East officials.
Abdullah, who is hoping to revive dialogue between the United States and Iran, discussed prospects with the Bush administration during a private visit to Washington on Thursday and Friday. He visited Tehran earlier this fall, the first visit by a Jordanian leader in a quarter-century, the officials said. Jordanian Foreign Minister Marwan Muasher also traveled to Iran for further talks shortly before the king's U.S. visit.
Jordan's effort reflects growing interest in the Middle East in seeing the United States reopen informal talks with Iran, which were suspended after three sessions in Europe earlier this year. During his tour of Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria last week, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell was also urged to improve relations with Iran.
"Certainly people in the region, including other heads of state, are interested in seeing something happen. It's clear that people in the region would like us to do what we can to establish a better relationship," a senior State Department official said yesterday.
The growing interest by Arab countries is a significant shift, given long-standing tension between Arabs and Iran's Persians, and the general fear among secular Arab governments of Iran's Islamic regime.
The young monarch, who is growing into the role of regional mediator once played by his father, King Hussein, was heartened by interest even among Iran's hard-liners in resuming dialogue with the United States, U.S. and Arab diplomats said.
Jordan and other Arab governments believe the time is ripe in part because of instability in Iraq, which shares its longest border with Iran. Although Iran has a majority Shiite Muslim population, it also has large Kurdish, Arab and Sunni Muslim minorities, and any tensions among those communities in Iraq could spill across the 910-mile border.
The agreement two weeks ago between the United States and Europeans on Iran's nuclear energy program may improve prospects, Iran experts say. The resolution at the International Atomic Energy Agency avoided a new U.S.-Iran showdown through a compromise that deplores Tehran's past failure to come clean on nuclear enrichment efforts and institutes a fast-track procedure to discuss punitive sanctions at the U.N. Security Council if Iran engages in further violations.
After agreeing to surprise inspections and to suspend its uranium enrichment program, Tehran wants talks with Washington on its nuclear energy program. "Whatever we do with the rest of the world and whatever diplomatic gains we may be able to score, we won't be able to resolve this issue until the United States is on board. We're really serious about resolving it," an Iranian official said.
Despite pressure from U.S. neoconservatives to press for governmental change in Iran, the Bush administration has left open the possibility of renewing dialogue if Iran acts on al Qaeda.
In congressional testimony, Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage said in October that Washington is not interested in governmental change in Tehran and is open to dialogue if the al Qaeda issue is resolved. "We and others have made clear what Iran needs to do: hand over al Qaeda members to the United States or their country of origin," Sean McCormack, a National Security Council spokesman, said yesterday.
A key stumbling block is the People's Mujaheddin, or MEK, about 3,800 Iranians who launched attacks against Iran from camps in Iraq. In 1999, the State Department listed the MEK as a terrorist organization, and since the U.S. occupation of Iraq, the MEK has been confined to camps. "The Mujaheddin-e Khalq is a terrorist organization and will be treated like a terrorist organization," McCormack said.
Yet U.S. officials concede that the MEK still broadcasts anti-government programs into Iran and none of its members have been prosecuted or turned over to Iran -- as the United States demands Iran do with al Qaeda suspects. Iran says it is unwilling to cooperate on al Qaeda as long as the United States does not take similar steps on the MEK.
U.S. officials counter that many senior MEK officials fled to Europe, particularly France, and those left behind are largely "worker bees" and children. U.S. military officials continue to investigate whether any of the 3,800 should be prosecuted for terrorist acts. The MEK's fate has divided the administration, however, with the State Department pressing the Pentagon to fully disarm the MEK and treat it as a terrorist organization -- rather than as a potential ally.
Jordan is interested in al Qaeda in part because a top official still on the loose is Jordanian-born Abu Musab Zarqawi, who has been reported in northern Iraq, Turkey, Lebanon and Iran. Among those suspected of being in Iran are Saad bin Laden, the son of the al Qaeda founder; military organizer Saif Adel; al Qaeda spokesman Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, and Abu Mohammed Masri, who was tied to the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A42018-2003Dec6.htmlIran-contra contact linked to White House
By James Risen
December 8, 2003
When clandestine meetings between Pentagon officials and Iranian dissidents were revealed in the middle of the year, the US played down the importance of the contacts, particularly with one participant - a discredited Iranian dealmaker who had played a role in the Iran-contra affair in the late 1980s.
But now officials say the initial meeting with the Iranians was organised with the knowledge of a national security adviser to President George Bush, who also informed the CIA director, George Tenet, and the Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage.
The Senate select committee on intelligence is examining the meetings, in December 2001 and June last year, which were initiated by Manucher Ghorbanifar, an Iranian who acted as a middleman in the Iran-contra affair during the Reagan administration and was long ago labelled a fabricator by US intelligence officials. One important question is whether US officials were aware of his involvement before the meetings.
Stephen Hadley, Mr Bush's deputy national security adviser, raised no objection when Pentagon officials told him of plans to meet the Iranians in late 2001, several officials said. An Administration official familiar with his version of events said Mr Hadley did not remember being told that Mr Ghorbanifar would be at the meeting.
When the contacts with Mr Ghorbanifar and other Iranians were first reported in the media last northern summer, the high-level attention the meetings received at the White House and other agencies was not disclosed. The fresh details about the contacts also illuminate a schism between US intelligence agencies and more hawkish officials at the Pentagon and in the White House who pursued the contacts.
Mr Ghorbanifar's involvement caused concern within the Bush Administration because it evoked memories of Iran-contra and questions about whether the Pentagon was engaging in rogue covert operations. The Pentagon had conducted its own internal review of the Ghorbanifar matter, officials said.
In the 1980s Mr Ghorbanifar repeatedly sought contacts with the CIA to act as a go-between with Iranian officials in what became known as the Iran-contra affair. The arms-for-hostage scandal was a series of secret manoeuvres to sell arms to Iran in exchange for the release of US hostages in Lebanon and financing for contra fighters opposing the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. It led to lengthy congressional and criminal investigations that deeply scarred the Reagan administration and the CIA.
One result of the Iran-contra scandal was a decision by the CIA that it could not trust Mr Ghorbanifar. A 1987 congressional report on Iran-contra said that after he failed CIA-administered lie tests, the agency issued a warning that he "should be regarded as an intelligence fabricator and a nuisance". He has been considered a con artist by the CIA ever since.
But he has been persistent. Two years ago he found a way to act as an intermediary again - this time with the Pentagon. The secret meetings were first held in Rome in December 2001, and were brokered by Michael Ledeen, a conservative analyst at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington who has a longstanding interest in Iranian affairs and close ties to many hardline conservatives in the Bush Administration.
At first, Mr Ledeen was sceptical of the offer.
"Ghorbanifar called me, and at first I said, 'Are you insane?' " he said. "But he said he could arrange meetings with Iranians with current information about what Iran was doing. It wasn't information coming from him. He was just arranging the meetings."
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/12/07/1070732073061.html