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Officials: Iran's President Writes to Bush
By NASSER KARIMI, Associated Press Writer 24 minutes ago
Iran's leader has written to President Bush proposing "new solutions" to their differences in the first letter from an Iranian head of state to an American president in 27 years, a government spokesman said Monday.
Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki delivered the letter to the Swiss ambassador on Monday, ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told The Associated Press. The Swiss Embassy in Tehran houses a U.S. interests section.
In the letter, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad proposes "new solutions for getting out of international problems and the current fragile situation of the world," spokesman Gholam-Hossein Elham told a news conference.
Elham declined to reveal more, stressing "it is not an open letter." Asked whether the letter could lead to direct U.S.-Iranian negotiations, he replied: "For the time being, it's just a letter."
Elham did not mention the nuclear dispute the main obstacle between Washington and Tehran. The United States is leading Western efforts to pass a U.N. Security Council motion censuring Iran for refusing to cease enrichment of uranium.
It is the first time that an Iranian president has written to his U.S. counterpart since 1979, when the two countries broke off relations after Iranian militants stormed the U.S. Embassy and held the occupants hostage for more than a year.
Iran's top nuclear negotiator also said Monday that Tehran would like to see a peaceful solution to growing tensions with the United States. Ali Larijani was in Turkey as part of efforts to rally support for Iran's nuclear program ahead of possible Security Council action.
Ahmadinejad arrives in Indonesia on Tuesday for a six-day trip to do the same.
Last week, Larijani went to the United Arab Emirates to reassure its government about Iran's nuclear program, and last month former Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani made a similar visit to Kuwait.
The United States is backing efforts by Britain and France to win Security Council approval for a U.N. resolution that would threaten possible further measures if Iran does not suspend uranium enrichment a process that can produce fuel for nuclear reactors to generate electricity or material for nuclear warheads.
The Western nations want to invoke Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter that would allow economic sanctions or military action, if necessary, to force Iran to comply with the Security Council's demand that it cease enrichment.
But Russia and China, the other two veto-holding members of the Security Council members, oppose such moves.
Iran claims its nuclear program is strictly for generating electricity and that it requires enrichment to be self-reliant in fuel for nuclear reactors. But the United States and its allies believe that Iran is secretly developing nuclear weapons.
On Sunday, Ahmadinejad renewed Iran's threat to withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty if the Security Council imposes sanctions on Tehran.
Ahmadinejad told the official Islamic Republic News Agency that Washington and its allies "don't give us anything and yet they want to impose sanctions on us." He called the threat of sanctions "meaningless."
Elham said Monday that Iranians had endured sanctions before. "We're not concerned" about the prospect of U.N. sanctions, he added.
Kathianne said:I do believe this guy is crackers. Then again, maybe not...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060508/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iran_us
Monday, May 8
Victor Davis Hanson on the Bush letter from Xerxes, and comments on what to do in Darfur.
05-08hanson.mp3
HH: As I mentioned earlier in the program, the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejead, sent to President Bush an 18 page letter today, contents unknown. Joining me to discuss this, Victor Davis Hanson, military historian and author at Victorhanson.com, of a column on Iran dated today. Professor Hanson, welcome back.
VDH: Thank you for having me, Hugh.
HH: How is your recovery going?
VDH: It's got a few ups and downs, but I'm looking at the long term, and I think it's getting better.
HH: That's good. That's good. I'm glad to see you're back writing frequently over at both Private Papers, which is Victorhanson.com, and at National Review. Professor, this is not the first letter that a leader of an invasion of the West, or the threat to the West has sent to the leader of the West. I'm thinking of Xerxes and Leonidas. But what do you think the President should do with an 18 page letter from the Iranian nutter at the top of the regime?
VDH: Well, I wrote a column saying give him enough rope and he'll hang himself. And I think the more deranged and unhinged he seems...I mean, statesmen don't write 18 page letters to each other, that finally, people in the region, the Gulf sheikdoms, the Eruopeans, will try...they won't do anything, but they'll finally cease the criticism of the United States. And this plan is two steps forward for him, and one step back. So he presses, presses, presses, says he's going to wipe off Israel off the face of the map, says the United States is going to suffer from terrorism. Then we get mad, the U.N. gets mobilized, and then he takes one step back, and then two forward. And the net result is he's always one step further to the acquision of nuclear weapons.
HH: Let's pause for a moment, Victor Davis Hanson, on the statement that you made that statesmen do not send other statesmen 18 page letters. Can you expand on that?
VDH: Well, I mean there's...sophisticated statesmen have a succinct and diplomatic and judicious and sober way of communicating. And the reputation of this man is that he's unhinged, that he listens to the imam in the well, that people don't blink when he speaks, because of his holy aura that hangs over him. And it's in line with the rambling, 18 page letter. But that being said, in nuclear politics, appearing unhinged can be an advantage, as you know, because it sort of excuses you from classical responsibilities of deterrence. So the crazier that he sounds, and this is in line with that, the more people think you know, this man won't react to threats of deterrence. He knows the Europeans very well. He knows that if he wakes up tomorrow with a nuclear weapon, the Europeans are going to shrug, lament, castigate him in their papers, and line up to sell him weapons. And he knows also that the American left will say well, we live with Pakistan, what's the big deal?
HH: That's what...I want to come back to that, but I do want to pause for a moment. The Reuters report, and my suspicion is most mainstream media tomorrow will report this without any pejorative attached to the length of the letter. In fact, the Reuters report begins, "Iran's president sent an unprecedented letter to President George W. Bush on Monday, suggesting ways to ease tension over Tehran's nuclear program. But skeptical U.S. officials said it may be a political ploy..."
VDH: Yeah, look at the language there.
HH: Isn't that amazing?
VDH: Skeptical, ploy. So a man does something unprecedented, and writes a rambling, 18 page letter, and those who don't take it at face value are called skeptical, and this is dubbed a ploy, and disparaging our own. We've been there with these people before when Bill Clinton apologized for the Shah. He said that the Iranian democracy was the most liberal in his mind. He went to Davos, Switzerland a year ago, and fell all over himself to appease these people. And it doesn't lead to anything as long as that government's in power.
HH: Let's go back to the column that you wrote today about selling them enough rope. What is to be done about a nuclear Iran? Give us a succinct summary if you would, Professor Hanson, your prescription.
VDH: Well, in the time that they reach their nuclear potential, I think we've about a year, a year and a half. And I think that we want to exhaust the U.N. We want to exhaust the Europeans. We want to show how cynical the Chinese and Russians are, in either buying oil or selling them weapons. We want the American left to praise multilateralism. We want to renounce preemption. We want to renounce unilateralism. But then in the back of our mind, we have to say to ourselves, when we get the exact information we need at the 11th hour, we've got to take these things out. But in the meantime, let's go through all of these different routes. Maybe the Iraqi experiment will prove more destabilizing to the Iranians than the Iranians are to the Iraqi democrats. Maybe their dissident, this mythical dissident group might rise up. Let's let him keep talking, scare people, let the whole process go out until people who see no alternative will finally shrug their shoulders and say you know, when it's all said and done, the only...the power and the resolve of the United States is the thing that keeps us away from nuclear disaster in that region.
HH: What do you make of Shimon Peres' statement today to Reuters, that, "The president of Iran should remember that Iran can also we wiped off the map. Tehran is making a mockery of the international community's effort to solve the crisis surrounding Iran's nuclear program. Iran presents a danger to the entire world, not just to us." Is that saber-rattling? Or is that...
VDH: No, it's not, because what we have to remember is sixty years after the Holocaust, no Israeli statesman, with half the world's Jewry in what the Iranians have called a one bomb state, can pass down the posterity, the fact that he knew that the Iranians had threatened him with nuclear weapons, basically, and were trying to acquire them. No Israeli statesman is going to let that happen. So you can't ask an Israeli statement, given the Holocaust is only sixty years old, and this man's holding conferences to deny its existence, and threatening them, and trying to acquire nuclear weapons...It's responsible. If he didn't say that, it would be irresponsible.
HH: All right. A couple of other stories. Vice President Cheney endorsed over the weekend the ambitions of three nations to join the European Union, and especially NATO: Croatia, Albania and Macedonia. That's a very ambitious agenda of expansion. Wise in your view, Victor Davis Hanson?
VDH: Yes, I think it is. I think it's sending a message to Mr. Putin that we understand that they've got a windfall profit from this spike in oil prices. We understand the loss of pride and status with the collapse of the Soviet empire. But when it's all said and done, our confidence in Russia being a sober player in the international scene has been dashed, because they're causing trouble almost anywhere in the Middle East that we can think of, especially in Iran. And by the way, we can understand now what Russia would have done to its former client, Saddam. If it's selling missiles to the Iranians, what would they have done to Saddam with his new petrol windfall, given the spike in oil prices, had he still been in power?
HH: Excellent point. And then point number two, today the President, and I'll be playing some of this audio right after the break, made a major address on Darfur, and what he called the genocide there. What ought a major power to be doing in the case of Darfur, Victor Davis Hanson?
VDH: I think he's going to have to tell the world that we are here to help you. And we also know that when the United Nations takes a role in things, that people, as Mark Steyn pointed out, die. They simply die because the United Nations acts as if it's going to do things, so it thwarts unilateralism on the part of responsible parties, and it does nothing, and people perish and are forgotten. So I think the United States is saying look, we're willing to step forward, but we're not going to do this anymore where we get hung out to dry in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Balkans, and Panama. Every time we try to do something to stop a dictator or a thug, we have these triangulators who want it to be done, but not us to do it. So I think we're sort of seeing an American zen now, where the United States is trying to say you wanted this type of world, you have it. And then yet not being completely nihilistic, in the sense that we will act, finally, if no one else will, but we want this other dialogue to play out.
HH: And meaning that we have to be invited specifically to act?
VDH: I think so. But our action's not predicated on their invitation, but it works to our advantage to show that the alternatives, which we've had to listen to, which were so superior to our own, are going to be shown to be morally and ethically bankrupt.
HH: Victor Davis Hanson, as always, bracing. Thank you. Victorhanson.com, for the Iraq and the Iran columns.
End of interview.
Posted at 5:15PM PDT
