Lawrence Wilkerson, a top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell with whom he had a falling out over his criticisms of the Bush administration, told BBC Newsnight program that "Iran offered the US a package of concessions in 2003, but it was rejected." This plan, say experts, "corresponds pretty closely to what Washington is demanding from Tehran now." From BBC News's "Washington 'snubbed Iran offer'," January 18, 2007:
Tehran proposed ending support for Lebanese and Palestinian militant groups and helping to stabilise Iraq following the US-led invasion.
Offers, including making its nuclear programme more transparent, were conditional on the US ending hostility.
But Vice-President Dick Cheney's office rejected the plan, [Wilkerson] said.
One of the then Secretary of State Colin Powell's top aides told the BBC the state department was keen on the plan - but was over-ruled.
"We thought it was a very propitious moment to do that," Lawrence Wilkerson told Newsnight.
"But as soon as it got to the White House, and as soon as it got to the Vice-President's office, the old mantra of 'We don't talk to evil'... reasserted itself."
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UPDATE: Thanks to Cotterperson, we now also have the link to the video of the interview of Wilkerson on BBC's Newsnight. (Cotterperson mentions that you should click on "Latest Programme.")
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This is not the first time Wilkerson has spoken up on the 2003 proposal from Iran. In March 2006, IPS News Agency reported that it received an e-mail from Wilkerson on the Bush administration's squandering of a key opportunity to employ diplomacy with Iran. IPS also interviewed Iran expert Flynt Leverett whose recent NYT op-ed on Iran was redacted by the CIA at the insistence of the White House:
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"The secret cabal got what it wanted: no negotiations with Tehran," Wilkerson wrote in an e-mail to 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 U.S. concerns about its nuclear programme, 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.
It also raised the possibility of cutting off Iran's support for Hamas and Islamic Jihad and converting Hezbollah into a purely socio-political organisation, 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 United States to address security questions, the lifting of economic sanctions and normalisation of relations, including support for Iran's integration into the global economic order.
Leverett also recalls that it was drafted with the blessing of all the major political players in the Iranian regime, including the "Supreme Leader", Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
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.
A draft National Security Policy Directive (NSPD) on Iran calling for diplomatic engagement had been in the process of interagency coordination for more than a year, according to a source who asks to remain unidentified.
But it was impossible to get formal agreement on the NSPD, the source recalls, because officials in Cheney's office and in Undersecretary of Defence for Policy Douglas Feith's Office of Special Plans wanted a policy of regime change and kept trying to amend it.
Opponents of the neoconservative 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 e-mail, was "managed by a national security adviser incapable of standing up to the cabal..."
In the absence of an Iran policy, the two contending camps struggled in 2003 over a proposal by realists in the administration to reopen the Geneva channel with Iran that had been used successfully on Afghanistan in 2001-2002. They believed Iran could be helpful in stabilising post-conflict Iraq, because the Iraqi Shiite militants who they expected to return from Iran after Hussein's overthrow owed some degree of allegiance to Iran.
The neoconservatives tried to block those meetings on tactical policy grounds, according to Leverett. "They were saying we didn't want to engage with Iran because we didn't want to owe them," he recalls.
Nevertheless, U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad was authorised to begin meeting secretly in Geneva with Iranian officials to discuss Iraq. The neoconservatives then tried to sandbag the talks by introducing a demand for full information on any high-ranking al Qaeda cadres who might be detained by the Iranians.
Iran regarded that information as a bargaining chip.
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On May 3, as the Iranian "grand bargain" proposal was on its way to Washington, Tehran's representative in Geneva, Javad Zarif, offered a compromise on the issue, according to Leverett: if the United States gave Iran the names of the cadres of the Mujahideen e Kalq (MEK) who were being held by U.S. forces in Iraq, Iran would give the United States the names of the al Qaeda operatives they had detained.
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[There's much more in this fascinating detailed article from IPS.]
You're all familiar with Wilkerson's many statements, including his statement that his participation in Powell's U.N. address before the Iraq War was his "lowest point." Here's some more background on Wilkerson's outspoken criticisms of the Bush administration:
In an interview that aired on PBS in Spring 2006 Wilkerson claimed that the speech Powell made before the United Nations on Feb. 5, 2003, laying out a case for war with Iraq, included falsehoods of which Powell had never been made aware. He said, "My participation in that presentation at the UN constitutes the lowest point in my professional life. I participated in a hoax on the American people, the international community and the United Nations Security Council."
He stated in the interview that he was "intimately involved in the preparation of Secretary Powell for his five February 2003 presentation at the UN Security Council" and that neither CIA Director George Tenent nor the CIA analysts involved in furnishing Powell with the information on mobile biological laboratories that he would use in his speech gave any indication that there were disputes about the reliability of the informants who had supplied this information.
Wilkerson still sees this lapse as the result of a profound intelligence failure, saying, "I have to believe that. Otherwise I have to believe some rather nefarious things about some fairly highly placed people in the intelligence community and perhaps elsewhere."
Wilkerson also agreed with the interviewer that Vice President Cheney's frequent trips to the CIA would inevitably have brought "undue influence" on the agency. When asked if Cheney was "the kind of guy who could lean on somebody" he responded, "Absolutely. And be just as quiet and taciturn about it as-- he-- as he leaned on 'em. As he leaned on the Congress recently-- in the-- torture issue."
Wilkerson stood strongly by his earlier description of Cheney and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld as having formed a cabal to hijack the decision-making process, emphasizing both their determination to ignore the Geneva Conventions and the "inept and incompetent" planning for post-invasion Iraq. And he concluded, "I'm worried and I would rather have the discussion and debate in the process we've designed than I would a diktat from a dumb strongman. . . . I'd prefer to see the squabble of democracy to the efficiency of dictators."
Wilkerson backed Jim Webb's candidacy for the U.S. Senate:
On September 26, 2006 Wilkerson endorsed and expressed full support in a conference call to the media, with former NATO Supreme Allied Commander U.S. Army General Wesley Clark, and former Central Command Commander U.S. Marine General Anthony Zinni for fellow veteran and U.S. Senate Democratic Candidate, Jim Webb.
Of note: The Wikipedia entry from which I gathered the last biographical items does not mention Wilkerson's revelations on the Iranian proposal. An experienced Wikipedia writer should update Wilkerson's entry.
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Hat tip to SadTexan who wrote up the BBC story earlier.
An earlier version of this was posted at No Quarter.