Rice Disputes Claim of Iranian Overture By ANNE GEARAN
The Associated Press
February 7, 2007
....
The document, faxed to the State Department in the early days of the U.S.-led war in Iraq, proposed direct talks, perhaps in Paris. Iraq was at the top of the proposed agenda, with Tehran proposing "active Iranian support for Iraqi stabilization."
The text of the document has been provided to news organizations, including The Associated Press.
"You did not see that supposed fax?" Wexler asked Rice.
"I just have to tell you that perhaps somebody saw something of the like, but I can tell you I would have noticed if the Iranians had offered to recognize Israel," she replied.
The administration dismissed the proposal, which has since become a touchstone for criticism that the Bush administration muffed a chance to avert Iran's rush toward nuclear proficiency that could produce a bomb.
Rice was asked about such criticism from a former National Security Council aide, Flynt Leverett.
"I don't know what Flynt Leverett's talking about, quite frankly," Rice said. "Maybe I should ask him when he came to me and said, 'We have a proposal from Iran and we really ought to take it.'"
Leverett had left the NSC by the time the fax arrived, but he said in an interview that he knows the document was sent to the NSC. It also went to Rice's predecessor as secretary of state, Colin Powell, former officials have said.
From
this thread:
Iran offered up "the grand bargain" to Bush in May, 2003, and he blew it off.From
Craig Unger in the March, 2007 issue of
Vanity Fair:
Shortly after the invasion of Iraq, when the U.S. mission there seemed accomplished or at least accomplishable, Iran came to fear that it would be next in the crosshairs. To stave off that possibility, Iran's leadership, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, began to assemble a negotiating package. Suddenly, everything was on the table—Iran's nuclear program, policy toward Israel, support of Hamas and Hezbollah, and control over al-Qaeda operatives captured since the U.S. went to war in Afghanistan.
This comprehensive proposal, which diplomats took to calling "the grand bargain," was sent to Washington on May 2, 2003, just before a meeting in Geneva between Iran's U.N. ambassador, Javad Zarif, and neocon Zalmay Khalilzad, then a senior director at the National Security Council. (Khalilzad went on to become the U.S. ambassador to Iraq and was recently nominated to be America's envoy to the U.N.) According to a report by Gareth Porter in The American Prospect, Iran offered to take "decisive action against any terrorists (above all, al-Qaeda) in Iranian territory." In exchange, Iran wanted the U.S. to pursue "anti-Iranian terrorists"—i.e., the MEK. Specifically, Iran offered to share the names of senior al-Qaeda operatives in its custody in return for the names of MEK cadres captured by the U.S. in Iraq.
Well aware that the U.S. was concerned about its nuclear program, Iran proclaimed its right to "full access to peaceful nuclear technology," but offered to submit to much stricter inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (I.A.E.A.). On the subject of Israel, Iran offered to join with moderate Arab regimes such as Egypt and Jordan in accepting the 2002 Arab League Beirut declaration calling for peace with Israel in return for Israel's withdrawal to its pre-1967 borders. The negotiating package also included proposals to normalize Hezbollah into a mere "political organization within Lebanon," to bring about a "stop of any material support to Palestinian opposition groups (Hamas, Jihad, etc.) from Iranian territory," and to apply "pressure on these organizations to stop violent actions against civilians within borders of 1967."
To be sure, Iran's proposal was only a first step. There were countless unanswered questions, and many reasons not to trust the Islamic Republic. Given the initiative's historic scope, however, it was somewhat surprising when the Bush administration simply declined to respond. There was not even an interagency meeting to discuss it. "The State Department knew it had no chance at the interagency level of arguing the case for it successfully," former N.S.C. staffer Flynt Leverett told The American Prospect. "They weren't going to waste Powell's rapidly diminishing capital on something that unlikely."
Iran had sent the proposal through an intermediary, Tim Guldimann, the Swiss ambassador to the U.S. A few days later, Leverett said, the White House had the State Department send Guldimann a message reprimanding him for exceeding his diplomatic mandate. "We're not interested in any grand bargain," said Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton, who went on to become interim ambassador to the U.N. until his resignation last December.
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