Top Obama Advisor David Axelrod: US "looking to sit down and talk to the Iranians."

U.S. officials insist the door remains open [to negotiations with Iran over the nuclear issue], despite questions about the legitimacy of Ahmadinejad's re-election and his anti-American rhetoric.

"It's in the United States' national interest to make sure that we have employed all elements at our disposal, including diplomacy, to prevent Iran from achieving that nuclear capacity," said Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

And David Axelrod, Obama's top adviser, said Washington was "looking to [...] sit down and talk to the Iranians."

Still he qualified his comments with a veiled threat of further U.N. sanctions should Iran remain defiant...Axelrod said that any negotiations with Tehran will offer "two paths [...] one brings them back into the community of nations, and the other has some very stark consequences."

Associated Press, Wed Jul 1, 12:58 pm ET

Sen. John Kerry: Ultimately, we are going to deal with a government in Iran because the nuclear issue is so compelling, urgent, dangerous

Ha'aretz/Reuters: The Obama administration has rescinded invitations to Iranian diplomats to attend U.S. independence day celebrations on July 4, the White House said on Wednesday.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Iranian diplomats had in any case not replied to invitations already sent out. Initially, the administration had said that the invitation still stood, but by Wednesday afternoon announced otherwise.

"As far as I know not a single Iranian accepted the invitation to 4 of July celebration? said State Department Spokesman Ian Kelly said earlier Wednesday. "They are celebration of our basic values of independence and freedom, which are exactly what Iranians demand on the streets."

U.S. officials and analysts believe that the political turmoil in Iran surrounding its contested June 12 presidential election has dimmed immediate prospects for U.S. dialogue with Tehran, but say U.S. President Barack Obama's hopes for engagement have by no means been snuffed out.

Officials acknowledge that the Iranian authorities bloody crackdown on street protests sparked by the election have made it less likely that Tehran will wish to engage and harder for the Obama administration to do so.

However, Obama has deliberately not withdrawn his open-hand policy toward Iran even as the authorities displayed an iron fist to intimidate demonstrators in the biggest anti-government protests since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

"The president's policy of engagement is obviously delayed, but we are going to have to deal with the government of Iran," Senator John Kerry, chairman of the influential Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told Reuters.

"The dust will have to settle but ultimately we are going to deal with a government of Iran because we have to, because the nuclear issue is so compelling, urgent, dangerous and important to us," he added.

Since taking office, Obama has made a series of overtures to Iran - including inviting its diplomats to July 4th parties at U.S. embassies around the world - as a way of trying to rebuild ties severed after the 1979 Islamic revolution.

The U.S. hope is to coax Iran into a negotiation over its nuclear program - which Washington suspects is designed to produce atomic bombs but which Tehran says is to generate electricity - as well as other issues.

Jim Dobbins, a senior fellow at the Rand Corporation nonprofit research group and a former top U.S. diplomat who has dealt extensively with Iranians, said an assumption that the engagement policy was now dead took too short-term a view.

"Engagement with Iran is off for the foreseeable future, but the foreseeable future extends about a week," he said.

"If the regime succeeds in tamping down resistance, establishing effective control, and then proves willing to engage the United States in meaningful talks, my guess is that the administration will ultimately agree, although it will be more difficult as a result of these events," he added.

Security forces have clamped down on Tehran to prevent protest rallies. Reformists say the election was rigged to return President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power and to keep out moderate former prime minister Mirhossein Mousavi.

The furor over the election has exposed deep rifts within Iran's political elite, with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei solidly backing Ahmadinejad against Mousavi and declaring the disputed election result would stand.

U.S. conservatives argued that the Iranian crackdown had vindicated their view that Iran's ruling authorities are not willing to negotiate with the West over their nuclear program.

"I think his underlying policy is fundamentally wrong because negotiation is doomed to failure in the future, just as it has been doomed to failure in the past, when it comes to their nuclear program," said John Bolton, a U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under former President George W. Bush.

"I think the policy he should be pursuing is overthrowing the Islamic revolution of 1979," he said, calling for the United States to funnel more resources -- covert and overt -- to strengthen opponents of the Islamic republic inside and outside Iran.

Obama has taken some political heat for his careful response to the election, with Republicans arguing that he should supported the protesters earlier and and criticized the government's crackdown against them more sharply.

Kerry, however, suggested that Obama could not afford to write off the possibility of negotiating with Ahmadinejad.

"We don't' have the luxury of choosing our negotiating partners in certain situations," he said.

Asked how long any engagement might be delayed, Kerry replied: "I can't tell you how long that is, it could be a matter of weeks.

"Personally, I don't believe it will be a long period of time, but that will ultimately depend on how they will resolve this crisis, internally in Iran. If they choose to do things that are so extreme that they confront everybody's conscience ... they could make it very [difficult] in the short term."

Published as "Obama rescinds July 4 invites to Iranian diplomats"By Natasha Mozgovaya, Haaretz Correspondent and Reuters http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1095360.html

Excerpt from "How Iran’s Hardliners Shot Themselves in the Foot," Shaul Bakhash, The Forward, June 26, 2009

"The irony of all this is that Mousavi actually did not necessarily pose a fundamental threat to the status quo. Certainly, he would have softened the tone of Iranian foreign policy, reverting to the type of presidential rhetoric that preceded Ahmadinejad’s term in office.

"And even Khamenei himself has not ruled out engaging America, so long as it is done on his terms. In any case, Iran’s nuclear policy is set by the supreme leader, not by the president. Moreover, easing of social, press and political controls of the kind envisaged by Mousavi would have been limited in scope. Yet the hardliners persisted in the belief that any relaxing of controls would be the thin edge of the wedge that would destabilize the whole system….

"If there is engagement with America, Khamenei wants to control it. In Ahmadinejad, he has a willing collaborator. In Mousavi, he might have had a president with a mind of his own.
These considerations may explain the decision to manipulate the election results — and the available evidence points to the conclusion that the results were, indeed, falsified — in order to give Ahmadinejad an undeserved victory."

Former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: The US must ultimately talk to the Iranian regime about nuclear proliferation

Former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on Rachel Maddow 6/23/09: After concurring with President Obama's condemnation of the Iranian regime's violent repression of peaceful protesters, Albright responded in part as follows to the question of whether the US will, in the end, have to recognize that Ahmadinejad is the president of Iran, if indeed he remains in power:

“. . . The issue is ultimately what are US national interests. The President said that we are very concerned about the direction that Iran is going on [their] nuclear program….I have to say that we have dealt with a lot of odious people in order to deal with issues that are larger.

"For instance, we dealt with Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, we dealt with other people that we don’t like when we have to deal with America’s national interests, and the truth is that nuclear proliferation is one of the biggest problems that we have.”

Watch the video of Albright's comments below:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

(The entire interview is at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#31514869)

Top Republican Senator Richard Lugar: US should sit down with Iran despite post-election turmoil

6/21/09
WASHINGTON (AP) — A top Republican senator says the United States should still sit down with Iran, despite postelection turmoil in Tehran. Sen. Richard Lugar says the U.S. has a goal of containing Iran's nuclear ambition. He says the two countries should meet even though there are protests in Tehran over this month's presidential vote.

Lugar, R-Ind., says President Barack Obama or Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton should be ready to meet with their Iranian counterparts. Lugar spoke to CNN's "State of the Union."

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

For video see
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/21/richard-lugar-us-should-s_n_218538.html

WASHINGTON, June 21 (UPI) -- U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., says the United States should "sit down" with Iran to negotiate an end to its nuclear program. Echoing a sentiment expressed last week by President Barack Obama that he would continue to seek a dialogue with Iran even in the face of a crackdown on government political opponents, Lugar said on CNN's "State of the Union" news program Sunday that he, too, would want to continue direct talks.

"We would sit down because our objective is to eliminate the nuclear program that is in Iran," said Lugar, the ranking Republican member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "Of course, we really have to get into the nuclear weapons. ... Now we have a new opportunity in which we might very well say we want communication with Iran."

Former CIA Deputy Director under Bush: Take military option off the table on Iran

As the fifth consecutive day of protests in Iran drew to a close, one of the chief members of President Bush's intelligence apparatus warned that the United States should forgo the military option no matter what the outcome of the contested elections.

"I would argue against any military option. I just don't think it will work, and it will have consequences that will be severe," said John McLaughlin, former Deputy Director of the CIA under President George W. Bush.

...a growing majority of thinkers and opinion makers are urging the United States to adopt a less confrontational approach when it comes to Iran, cognizant that a popular movement exists within that country for greater international engagement.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/18/bush-cia-honcho-military_n_217297.html

An Israeli military strike on Iran would have snuffed out Iran’s new democratic revolution

Bernard Avishai reminds us that had Israeli hawks had their way last year and launched a military strike on Iran--blocked, thankfully, by a chastened Bush Administration and Pentagon--it would have snuffed out the democratic revolution we are witnessing today in Iran:

"As I write, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of mainly young Iranians are deciding whether or not to risk going out into the streets. There is little someone like myself can add regarding the poignancy of their decision. Yet one thing seems obvious: a generation of Iranians has been changed by these rallies--changed in roughly the opposite way they would have been had Israeli military intelligence got its way, and won American and IDF agreement to an aerial strike on Iranian nuclear facilities earlier this year.

"Even in the face of mass protest, not only did Mossad chief Meir Dagan refuse to admit the obvious--that an attack would have caused widespread carnage, put Iran on a war footing, and preempted its twittering liberalism--but he's had the audacity to predict to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee what nobody could possibly know at this point, that the protests will peter out; that, anyway, a Mousavi government would be worse than Ahmadinejad's regime, for it would give Iran's nuclear program a prettier face. ("To hell with those students; the PowerPoint is done.")

"Still, it is not military planners like Dagan who seem reprehensible to me. It is the politicians and writers who channel them. We pay people like Dagan to sum the weapons of potential enemies and come up with ways to foil them. (The only reason we'll be able to live with a nuclear Iran, should this become necessary, is because military planners will have figured out how to position Israel's own nuclear deterrent.) And Dagan's main job is to think like a "made man," turning worst case contingencies into scenarios, and scenarios into "predictions." Mossad people say they also look at motive, not just capability. But who doesn't know how easily military people assume that capability translates into motive, much the way economists assume big money translates into investment. Motive? We are not talking about James Joyce here.

"On the other hand, nothing seems more irresponsible to me than politicians and political analysts who lack the poise to stand up to military intelligence when important policy decisions are taking shape; politicians so eager to prove that they are not still trusting children that they remain forever sophomoric, defining the world as a test of wills, fearing (as Orwell did in "Shooting an Elephant") looking like a fool; writers so eager to prove that they are not just brainy wimps that they hang out with, and flaunt being respected by, officers.

"So before the moment passes, we should give thanks that, owing (among other things) to McCain's defeat, this was one attack that never took place--and now never will, since it is obvious, even to the mullahs, I suspect, how the regime can simply be waited out, much the way Communist regimes were waited out; how they have lost the young [and many other segments of Iranian society].

"And before the next moment of crisis, we should not fail to note some of the most irresponsible journalism of the last couple of years: Benny Morris' call for a limited nuclear strike last July, and, more recently, Jeffery Goldberg's implied endorsement of some kind of attack. (Both were given enormous space in, of all places, the New York Times op-ed section, so the editors should probably be remembered, too.) And who can forget Haaretz's Arie Shavit, who is silent about Iran this week, but is already taking credit instead for Netanyhu's policy of a demilitarized Palestine?

"This accounting may seem small of me, but the celebrity culture being what it is, the periodic violence of extremists being what it is--and the fears summoned by ordinary neurosis being what they are--these writers will no doubt hang on nicely, cultivating their reputation for toughness (though Goldberg, to his credit, is repulsed by Dagan's statements, and seems to have come around to the idea that warning against the reckless use of force is not the same as weakness). Anyway, there is often credit for talking tough, while warning against violence is thankless. Just not at this moment, surely, and not in this case."

This passage from a reformed Jeffrey Goldberg from June 16 is worth reproducing:

"...I care mainly about which Iranians have the bomb, rather than whether Iran has the bomb. Maybe this is naive -- and maybe I'm caught up, as a suspected neocon fellow traveler, in the excitement of watching Middle Easterners attempting to free themselves from such an obviously tyrannical regime -- but I have to think that the people flooding the streets in protest are not the sort of people who would want to see their country enter a nuclear confrontation with Israel. Not, God forbid, because they like Israel, but because they're rational enough, and interested enough in the betterment of their own lives, to demand a government that puts a limit on Iran's foreign adventures. I recognize that the people of Iran do not currently shape their country's nuclear policy -- and their country's policies to Israel and the West -- but one can hope for better days, when they do."

How to Responsibly Advocate for Human Rights in Iran--Listen to what Iranian human rights groups, and the protestors themselves, ask of us

Iranian Human Rights Group Hopes the U.S. Stays Out of Election
By Spencer Ackerman 6/13/09 6:15 PM
...The White House is trying to strike a balance between three pressures: speaking in a Samizdat fashion to the Moussavi supporters who have just seen the election stolen by Ahmadinejad and the regime; not interfering in post-election events out of a very justified concern that the appearance of U.S. involvement will act as a delegitimizing force; and preserving the administration’s freedom of action should it have to accept a second Ahmadinejad term.

And with the exception of respecting the third consideration, the strongly anti-Ahmadinejad Hadi Ghaemi, New York-based spokesman for the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, doesn’t think the White House ought to say much else.

The White House statement may not fully capture the depth of the crime committed against the Iranian people. “But I think it’s wise for the U.S. government to keep its distance,” Ghaemi said in a phone interview. The White House can and should “show concern for human life and protesters’ safety and promote tolerance and dialogue.” But to get any further involved, even rhetorically, would “instigate the cry that the reformers are somehow driven and directed by the United States, whether under former President George W. Bush or under President Obama, and there’s no reason to give that unfounded allegation” any chance to spread.

Ghaemi continues to say that the international community should present a united front that gives “no legitimacy” to the election. In particular, he wants United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to express “serious grievances” about how the election was conducted. “Sanctions and military threats, all these things are counterproductive,” Ghaemi said. The initiative has to be expressed and promoted by the Iranians themselves, particularly from Moussavi and other exponents of popular Iranian outrage. “It very much depends on what leading reformers, including Moussavi, ask them to do, and how much responsibility do they take for exposing them to danger. If they put their tails between their legs and walk away, it will be very sad.”

And: “…government forces are already accusing protesters of collaborating with the U.S., and that protesters are actually worried that Obama will make an explicit show of support, as that would restore some credibility to what the government has said about the election and, more importantly, could undermine a reform coalition in which some factions are none-too-fond of America. http://washingtonindependent.com/47134/the-virtues-of-silence


This Is Not About Making the U.S. Feel Good About Itself

By Spencer Ackerman 6/15/09 3:30 PM
There’s a lot to agree with in my friend George Packer’s post about what’s happening in Iran. But I think George, who excels at intellectual history, might be missing a certain crucial component of the equation when viewing Obama’s actions here through the prism of realism vs. progressivism:

"With riot police and armed militiamen beating and, in a few reported cases, killing unarmed demonstrators in the streets of Iran’s cities, for the Obama Administration to continue parsing equivocal phrases serves no purpose other than to make it look feckless. Part of realism is showing that you have a clear grasp of reality—that you know the difference between decency and barbarism when both are on display for the whole world to see. A stronger American stand—taken, as much as possible, in concert with European countries and through multilateral organizations—would do more to improve America’s negotiating position than weaken it. Acknowledging the compelling voices of the desperate young Iranians who, after all, only want their votes counted, would not deep-six the possibility of American-Iranian talks. Ahmadinejad and his partners in the clerical-military establishment will talk to us exactly when and if they think it’s in their interest. Right now, they don’t appear to. And the tens of millions of Iranians who voted for change and are the long-term future of that country will always remember what America said and did when they put their lives on the line for their values."

What’s missing here is an effort at determining what the Iranian dissenters want from the Obama administration. The fact that it’s not clear what the answer to that question is itself serves as a powerful indicator that the protest movement is first and foremost concerned about handling this on its own. As best I can tell from NIAC and from Twitter and from talking with Iranian human rights advocates in the United States, the dissenters want the Obama administration to refuse to recognize Ahmadinejad’s claims of victory; to express concern for the safety of the protesters; and then to get out of the way. The Obama administration can be fairly criticized for not saying enough on the second point, though if, as Michael Scherer believes, Obama’s going to say something at 5 p.m., maybe that will change. But it doesn’t follow from Obama’s muted discussion of the dissenters that he’s indifferent to their plight. From talking to administration officials, I am convinced that they are very concerned that American rhetorical support will immediately become a cudgel in the hands of Ahmadinejad. Would that outcome advance human rights?

It’s emotionally unsatisfying not to proclaim unequivocal support for the protesters. But the truer measure of support, as Trita Parsi told me, is to follow their lead. Moussavi, for instance, has not issued any statement about what he wants the international community to do. If the protesters begin calling for a more direct American response, then that really will have to compel the administration to reconsider its position. But until then, with so many lives at stake, the administration can’t afford to take a stance just because it makes Americans feel just and righteous.

Trita Parsi on Obama’s Iran Comments
http://washingtonindependent.com/47203/trita-parsi-on-obamas-iran-comments
By Spencer Ackerman 6/16/09 9:35 AM
After two days of criticism that he should explicitly side with the Iranian opposition, President Obama yesterday said he was “deeply troubled” by the Iranian regime’s willingness to resort to violence, and while it’s “up to Iranians to make decisions about who Iran’s leaders will be,” he believes “the Iranian people and their voices should be heard and respected.”