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[R. S. Refugee]

Iran Proposal to U.S. Offered Peace with Israel
Gareth Porter*

WASHINGTON, May 24 (IPS) - Iran offered in 2003 to accept peace with Israel and cut off material assistance to Palestinian armed groups and to pressure them to halt terrorist attacks within Israel's 1967 borders, according to the secret Iranian proposal to the United States.

The two-page proposal for a broad Iran-U.S. agreement covering all the issues separating the two countries, a copy of which was obtained by IPS, was conveyed to the United States in late April or early May 2003. Trita Parsi, a specialist on Iranian foreign policy at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies who provided the document to IPS, says he got it from an Iranian official earlier this year but is not at liberty to reveal the source.

The two-page document contradicts the official line of the George W. Bush administration that Iran is committed to the destruction of Israel and the sponsorship of terrorism in the region.

Parsi says the document is a summary of an even more detailed Iranian negotiating proposal which he learned about in 2003 from the U.S. intermediary who carried it to the State Department on behalf of the Swiss Embassy in late April or early May 2003. The intermediary has not yet agreed to be identified, according to Parsi.

The Iranian negotiating proposal indicated clearly that Iran was prepared to give up its role as a supporter of armed groups in the region in return for a larger bargain with the United States. What the Iranians wanted in return, as suggested by the document itself as well as expert observers of Iranian policy, was an end to U.S. hostility and recognition of Iran as a legitimate power in the region.

Before the 2003 proposal, Iran had attacked Arab governments which had supported the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. The negotiating document, however, offered "acceptance of the Arab League Beirut declaration", which it also referred to as the "Saudi initiative, two-states approach."

The March 2002 Beirut declaration represented the Arab League's first official acceptance of the land-for-peace principle as well as a comprehensive peace with Israel in return for Israel's withdrawal to the territory it had controlled before the 1967 war.. Iran's proposed concession on the issue would have aligned its policy with that of Egypt and Saudi Arabia, among others with whom the United States enjoyed intimate relations.

Another concession in the document was a "stop of any material support to Palestinian opposition groups (Hamas, Jihad, etc.) from Iranian territory" along with "pressure on these organizations to stop violent actions against civilians within borders of 1967".

Even more surprising, given the extremely close relationship between Iran and the Lebanon-based Hizbollah Shiite organisation, the proposal offered to take "action on Hizbollah to become a mere political organization within Lebanon".

The Iranian proposal also offered to accept much tighter controls by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in exchange for "full access to peaceful nuclear technology". It offered "full cooperation with IAEA based on Iranian adoption of all relevant instruments (93+2 and all further IAEA protocols)".

That was a reference to protocols which would require Iran to provide IAEA monitors with access to any facility they might request, whether it had been declared by Iran or not. That would have made it much more difficult for Iran to carry out any secret nuclear activities without being detected.

In return for these concessions, which contradicted Iran's public rhetoric about Israel and anti-Israeli forces, the secret Iranian proposal sought U.S. agreement to a list of Iranian aims. The list included a "Halt in U.S. hostile behavior and rectification of status of Iran in the U.S.", as well as the "abolishment of all sanctions".

Also included among Iran's aims was "recognition of Iran's legitimate security interests in the region with according defense capacity". According to a number of Iran specialists, the aim of security and an official acknowledgment of Iran's status as a regional power were central to the Iranian interest in a broad agreement with the United States.

Negotiation of a deal with the United States that would advance Iran's security and fundamental geopolitical political interests in the Persian Gulf region in return for accepting the existence of Israel and other Iranian concessions has long been discussed among senior Iranian national security officials, according to Parsi and other analysts of Iranian national security policy.

An Iranian threat to destroy Israel has been a major propaganda theme of the Bush administration for months. On Mar. 10, Bush said, "The Iranian president has stated his desire to destroy our ally, Israel. So when you start listening to what he has said to their desire to develop a nuclear weapon, then you begin to see an issue of grave national security concern."

But in 2003, Bush refused to allow any response to the Iranian offer to negotiate an agreement that would have accepted the existence of Israel. Flynt Leverett, then the senior specialist on the Middle East on the National Security Council staff, recalled in an interview with IPS that it was "literally a few days" between the receipt of the Iranian proposal and the dispatch of a message to the Swiss ambassador expressing displeasure that he had forwarded it to Washington.

Interest in such a deal is still very much alive in Tehran, despite the U.S. refusal to respond to the 2003 proposal. Turkish international relations professor Mustafa Kibaroglu of Bilkent University writes in the latest issue of Middle East Journal that "senior analysts" from Iran told him in July 2005 that "the formal recognition of Israel by Iran may also be possible if essentially a 'grand bargain' can be achieved between the U.S. and Iran".

The proposal's offer to dismantle the main thrust of Iran's Islamic and anti-Israel policy would be strongly opposed by some of the extreme conservatives among the mullahs who engineered the repression of the reformist movement in 2004 and who backed President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in last year's election.

However, many conservative opponents of the reform movement in Iran have also supported a negotiated deal with the United States that would benefit Iran, according to Paul Pillar, the former national intelligence officer on Iran. "Even some of the hardliners accepted the idea that if you could strike a deal with the devil, you would do it," he said in an interview with IPS last month.

The conservatives were unhappy not with the idea of a deal with the United States but with the fact that it was a supporter of the reform movement of Pres. Mohammad Khatami, who would get the credit for the breakthrough, Pillar said.

Parsi says that the ultimate authority on Iran's foreign policy, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was "directly involved" in the Iranian proposal, according to the senior Iranian national security officials he interviewed in 2004. Kamenei has aligned himself with the conservatives in opposing the pro-democratic movement.

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=33350

*Gareth Porter is an historian and national security policy analyst. His latest book, "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam", was published in June 2005.

[ddeubel]

Yes, the issue has always been about Iranians being treated fairly and with dignity by America. An issue ingrained and part of the cultural mindset of every Iranian. The nuclear issue is mute. The real issue is WHY the U.S. continues to rebuff all Iranian suggestions of dialogue and negotiation? What's the agenda? They have been more than forthright despite the crackpot mouthings off of their president (and equally matched by the other President)? Why the U.S. cold shoulder?

A good article about how Iranian history has affected Iranians and their present need to be viewed as independent and dignified......from the N.Y. Times.

Quote:

Iran's quest for power has deep roots By Abbas Amanat The New York Times THURSDAY, MAY 25, 2006 NEW HAVEN, Connecticut It is easy to label Iran's quest for nuclear energy a dangerous adventure with grave regional and international repercussions. It is also comforting to heap scorn on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for his earlier denial of the Holocaust and his odious call for the obliteration of the state of Israel. The rambling intransigence expressed in his recent letter to President George W. Bush offers ample insight into this twisted mindset. Yet there is something deeper in Iran's story than the extremist utterances of a messianic president and the calculated maneuvering of the hard-line clerical leadership that stands behind him. We tend to forget that Iran's insistence on its sovereign right to develop nuclear power is in effect a national pursuit for empowerment, a pursuit informed by at least two centuries of military aggression, domestic meddling, skullduggery and, not least, technological denial by the West. Every schoolchild in Iran knows about the CIA- sponsored coup in 1953 that toppled Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh. Even an Iranian with little interest in his or her past is conscious of how Iran throughout the 19th and 20th centuries served as a playground for the Great Game. Iranians also know that, hard as it may be for latter-day Americans and Europeans to believe, from the 1870s to the 1920s Russia and Britain deprived Iran of even basic technology like the railroad, which was then a key to economic development. At various times, both powers jealously opposed a trans-Iranian railroad because they thought it would threaten their ever-expanding imperial frontiers. When it was finally built, the British, Russian (and American) occupying forces during World War II made full use of it (free of charge), calling Iran a "bridge of victory" over Nazi Germany. They did so, of course, after Winston Churchill forced the man who built the railroad, Reza Shah Pahlavi, to abdicate and unceremoniously kicked him out of the country. Not long after, a similar Western denial of Iran's economic sovereignty resulted in a dramatic showdown that had fatal consequences for the country's fragile democracy and left lasting scars on its national consciousness. The oil nationalization movement of 1951 to 1953 under Mossadegh was opposed by Britain, and eventually by its partner in profit, the United States, with the same self-righteousness that today colors their views of the Iranian yearning for nuclear energy. Mossadegh was tried and sent into internal exile and Mohammed Reza Shah was reinstalled largely to safeguard American geopolitical interests and with little regard for the wishes of the Iranian people. A quarter- century later, Americans were "taken by surprise" when an Islamic revolution toppled the shah and transformed a country that seemed so friendly to the United States. But if Americans suffered from historical amnesia, for many Iranians, among them Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the thread of memory led clearly from the Great Game to the Great Satan. For a country like the United States that is built on paradigms of progress and pragmatism, grasping the mythical and psychological dimensions of defeat and deprivation at the hands of foreigners is difficult. Yet the Iranian collective memory is infused with such themes. Since the early 18th century, Iran has been involved in four devastating civil wars. America's own highly traumatic Civil War was, notwithstanding Britain's sympathy for the South, a largely domestic affair. In the civil wars that Iran endured, however, the Turks, Afghans, Russians and British played major parts. And before the arrival of Western powers, Iranians held bitter memories of the Ottomans, the Mongols and the Arabs. These intrusions punctuated the Iranians' modern historical narrative with conspiratorial fears and have helped to nurture a cult of the fallen hero, from the guerrilla leader Mirza Kuchak Khan to Amir Kabir, a 19th-century reformist prime minister, and later Mossadegh. Such painful collective memories have made Iran's pursuit of nuclear energy a national symbol of defiance that has transcended the motives of the current Islamic regime. If the United States resorts to sanctions, or worse, to some military response, the outcome would be not only disastrous but, in the long run, transient. Just as the West did with Iran's railroad and oil industry, it can for a time deny Iran nuclear technology, but it cannot wipe out Iranians' haunting memories. And no doubt the Islamic regime will amply exploit these collective memories to advance its nuclear program even as it stifles voices of domestic dissent. Even more than before, Iranians will blame outside powers for their misfortunes and choose not to focus on their own troubled road to modernity. If that course continues, Iran will most likely succeed, for ill or for good, in finding its own nuclear holy grail. Legend has it that the Persian king Hushang, an equivalent of Prometheus, introduced fire to the Iranians. But unlike his Greek mythological counterpart, who stole it from gods, he accidentally discovered it while fighting with a dragon. Abbas Amanat is a professor of history at Yale and author of the forthcoming "In Search of Modern Iran."

[Summer Wine]

I am sorry if I upset any of the previous writers, or anyone else.

I believe in action not words

If Iran is truly open to an arrangement with Israel, let them allow Israeli inspectors into their nuclear sites, as we all know what a nuclear power plant looks like and there shouldn't be any surprises.

Actually. if its so legit, then anybody should be given a guided tour as there is nothing to hide, right?

Thats what the Iranians say.

[ulsanchris]

In 2003 wasn't there another president in charge in Iran. If you could even say he was in charge. Even if the last president had any usefull power it wouldn't have mattered since the current president is staunchly against isreal.

[bignate]

[Summer Wine]

The Israeli Prime Minister has not called for the total destruction of Iran. Nor have they said that they would be happy so long as the bahii religion and its members are in control of Iran.

Iran has said it does not have nor intends to create weapons grade plutonium/uranium from its Nuclear power stations.Thus any one even yourself should be able to see that for yourself.

Nuclear power stations are not a state secret. What you use them for may be.Therefore if they have nothing to hide why the secrets?

[ddeubel]

[JAWINSEOUL]

If this article is such a peace offering, why not release it so we can decide ofr ourselves.

[R. S. Refugee]

[ddeubel]

Sorry, not trying to embellish.............length counts sometimes but only at the opposite end of the spectrum.....

DD

[flint]

[quote="Summer Wine"]If Iran is truly open to an arrangement with Israel, let them allow Israeli inspectors into their nuclear sites, as we all know what a nuclear power plant looks like and there shouldn't be any surprises.[quote]

Yeah, and Israel could reciprocate by allowing Iranian inspectors into their nuclear power plants, especially the one at Dimona. It ain't going to happen. While they might be talked into allowing UN inspectors in I can't see Israeli ones ever being allowed.

[Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee]

[fiveeagles]