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Two interesting pieces on US policy towards Iran out today. The NY Sun's Eli Lake reports on the increasingly tepid support for pro democracy supporters in Iran coming from the Bush White House, on the fifth anniversary of massive pro democracy demonstrations in Tehran:
Buoyed by statements from President Bush and a campaign on the Internet to provide timely photographs and news of the events on the ground, many Iranian dissidents were hopeful America’s policy that led to the toppling of Saddam Hussein would inspire a counterrevolution in Iran. Today, many of those dissidents feel betrayed by a president who had once so publicly voiced solidarity with their struggle.The author of “Reading Lolita in Tehran,” Azar Nafisi said the silence from the White House was “terrible.”
Meanwhile, the Washington Post's David Ignatius provides more details about a previously reported administration-authorized back channel between Washington and Tehran headed on the Washington side by former State Department official Ryan Crocker and former NSC official Flynt Leverett, which got scuttled by the neocons in the Pentagon. Leverett is currently the rapporteur for an Atlantic Council task force on US policy towards Iran being headed by former Bush I NSC advisor Brent Scowcroft. Crocker previously held the Iran portfolio for the State Department. Tehran and Washington had apparently discussed trading al Qaida suspects in Iranian custody for members of the Iranian dissident/some say terrorist group the Mujaheddin-e-Khalq in Iraq.
In a secret meeting in May in Geneva, the two sides explored an exchange of the "terrorist" captives. To assuage U.S. human rights worries, Iranians pledged to grant amnesty to most of the 4,000 Mujaheddin-e Khalq captives, to forgo the death penalty for about 65 leaders who would be tried in Iranian courts and to allow the International Committee of the Red Cross to supervise the transfer.
The Bush administration ultimately rejected this exchange, bowing to neoconservatives at the Pentagon who hoped to use the Mujaheddin-e Khalq against Tehran. Some administration officials were disappointed: "Why we didn't cut this deal is beyond me," says Flynt Leverett, who was in charge of Middle East policy for the National Security Council until last spring. The secret contacts were broken off in late May 2003...
In the year since, Iranian hard-liners have crushed reformers there and pushed ahead with their program to acquire nuclear weapons.
With Iranian hardliners in ascendence, pro democracy activists disheartened by lack of support or a single message coming from the Bush administration, and Tehran hard in pursuit of nuclear weapons, with many fingers in Iraq, it's hard to see how the Bush administration could have pursued a more destructive policy towards Tehran to date.