Bitter Friends, Bosom Enemies: Iran, the US and the Twisted Path to Confrontation<\/em>). Clemons a demand\u00e9 \u00e0 Slevin de r\u00e9sumer ces relations. On trouvera de quoi appr\u00e9cier d’une fa\u00e7on plus concr\u00e8te la th\u00e8se implicite en vogue aujourd’hui selon laquelle la crise iranienne est autant morale que strat\u00e9gique, qu’il y a dans l’attitude de l’Iran un danger mena\u00e7ant la civilisation, que la crise ne peut se r\u00e9gler qu’en imposant \u00e0 l’Iran des mesures fermes et sans concession.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00abThe first Bush administration, according to Brent Scowcroft, was eager for contacts with Iran. We’re happy to do it, Scowcroft told me he told various intermediaries. We could have it official, public or private citizen to private citizen, any way you want it. The two sides got as far in 1990 as agreeing to meet in Switzerland, but at the last minute the Iranians pulled the plug, Scowcroft said.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n\tUnder Clinton, relations took several steps back because of dual containment’ the effort to sanction and isolate both Iran and Iraq. After Mohammad Khatami was elected Iranian president in 1997, a warming trend ensued but the Clinton administration made a fatal error since continued by George W. Bush.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\t\u00bbIt sought to distinguish between the parts of the Iranian regime it liked namely Khatami and the parts it didn’t namely supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Iran’s military and intelligence establishment. Clinton went so far as to name a delegation to meet with the Khatami government, a team consisting of Bruce Riedel, his top NSC Mideast adviser, then undersecretary of State Tom Pickering and deputy assistant secretary David Welch. But the Iranians wouldn’t bite.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bbEnter George W. Bush. He had the best chance to patch up relations after 9-11 and he blew it. The U.S. and Iran both opposed the Taliban and Iran believed Bush and Cheney, as ex-oilmen, would lift sanctions. Unknown to many, the U.S. and Iran held secret, one-on-one high-level talks in Paris and Geneva from the fall of 2001 through May 2003, talks led on the U.S. side by Ryan Crocker and Zalmay Khalilzad.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bbIn early May 2003, through Swiss intermediaries, the Iranians also presented an offer for comprehensive negotiations (reprinted in the annex to my book). Bush, full of hubris over Iraq, did not even give the Iranians the courtesy of a reply. The Europe talks ended, meanwhile, after yours truly wrote about them on the front page of USA TODAY and al-Qaeda bombings took place in Saudi Arabia that the White House said were linked to al-Qaeda detainees in Iran.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bbThe Iranians did not give up, however. In late 2005 and through the spring of 2006, Ali Larijani, their new national security adviser, sought backchannel talks with Steve Hadley. Larijani went so far as to publicly accept a prior U.S. offer of talks on Iraq in March 2006. Supreme leader Khamenei publicly endorsed the talks, something he had never done before. Again, Bush sawed off the limb. The upshot: Larijani was weakened, Khamenei humiliated and Iran accelerated its nuclear program and its intervention in Iraq.<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\tMis en ligne le 19 octobre 2007 \u00e0 12H29<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dans la querelle USA-Iran, il est bon d’avoir \u00e0 l’esprit, ou disons en m\u00e9moire, les relations entre les USA et l’Iran de ces 10-15 derni\u00e8res ann\u00e9es. Depuis la fin de l’administration Bush-p\u00e8re (tr\u00e8s partisane d’un dialogue), c’est une suite ininterrompue de rebuffades, d’erreurs, d’inattentions, essentiellement US vis-\u00e0-vis des Iraniens. On retrouve dans l’approche favoris\u00e9e aussi… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[868,6179,934,2773,7140],"class_list":["post-69336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bloc-notes","tag-bush","tag-clemons","tag-clinton","tag-iran","tag-slavin"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69336\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}