Iran Peace Offering Denied by Neo-Cons?

That's what seems to have happened back in 2003, when Iran attempted to communicate with the US through Swiss intermediaries about measures it would take to satisfy US demands. It's reported by the Asia Times (with a hat tips for broadcasting it to Jerome a Paris and Fran over at the European Trib blog):

Lawrence Wilkerson, then chief of staff to secretary of state Colin Powell, said the failure to adopt a formal Iran policy in 2002-03 was the result of obstruction by a "secret cabal" of neo-conservatives in the administration, led by Vice President Dick Cheney.

"The secret cabal got what it wanted: no negotiations with Tehran," Wilkerson wrote in an e-mail to Inter Press Service (IPS).

The Iranian negotiating offer, transmitted to the State Department in early May 2003 by the Swiss ambassador in Tehran, acknowledged that Iran would have to address US concerns about its nuclear program, although it made no specific concession in advance of the talks, according to Flynt Leverett, then the National Security Council's senior director for Middle East Affairs.

Iran's offer also raised the possibility of cutting off Iran's support for Hamas and Islamic Jihad and converting Hezbollah into a purely socio-political organization, according to Leverett. That was an explicit response to Powell's demand in late March that Iran "end its support for terrorism".

In return, Leverett recalls, the Iranians wanted the US to address security questions, the lifting of economic sanctions and normalization of relations, including support for Iran's integration into the global economic order.

[...]

Realists, led by Powell and his deputy, Richard Armitage, were inclined to respond positively to the Iranian offer. Nevertheless, within a few days of its receipt, the State Department had rebuked the Swiss ambassador for having passed on the offer.

Exactly how the decision was made is not known. "As with many of these issues of national security decision-making, there are no fingerprints," Wilkerson told IPS. "But I would guess Dick Cheney with the blessing of George W Bush."

As Wilkerson observes, however, the mysterious death of what became known among Iran specialists as Iran's "grand bargain" initiative was a result of the administration's inability to agree on a policy toward Tehran.

[...]

Opponents of the neo-conservative policy line blame Condoleezza Rice, then the national security adviser, for the failure of the administration to override the extremists in the administration. The statutory policymaker process on Iran, Wilkerson told IPS in an e-mail, was "managed by a national security adviser incapable of standing up to the cabal ..."

As Jerome so eloquently sums up:

And thus we have the current escalation, instead of a sane grand peace bergain. The Iranians are rightly feeling threatened, and rationally see a nuclear bomb as their only protection... .

What a waste. What a fucking waste. The Iranians were ready to deal.

This administration doesn't want peace, it wants war.

It's a two-way street, and Iran certainly is a bit more unpredictable now thanks to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's rise to the presidency. But as Bob Woodward pointed out in his book, Plan of Attack, Cheney and the neo-cons have a fever for confrontation with Iraq and Iran.