I love reading interviews with George Perkovich on Iran. In his latest interview, he repeatedly says that the Iranians have "refused to negotiate" with the US over the nuclear issue.
Wrong.
Actually, the Iranians have repeatedly offered to negotiate with the US. They offered negotiations back in 2003 in the infamous fax that Rice lied about when she claimed that she had never seen it.
The Iranians have made a total of eight offers of nuclear compromise - including an offer to suspend industrial scale enrichment for several years (which wasn't reported in the US media) - all to be rebuffed.
In fact, it is the US that has refused to negotiate with Iran unless Iran first suspends enrichment - in other words, they'll negotiate only after Iran capitulates - an offer of negotiation that was designed to be rejected and increase skepticism towards the US.
Rather than offering negotiations, the US has instead repeatedly threatened to attack Iran - including a threat to attack Iran with nuclear weapons. Instead of expressing any interest in talking, the Bush administration spin-doctors have presented the entire issue as a false choice: to prevent Iran from getting nukes, either Iran must be sanctioned or attacked. Iran is simply assumed to be seekign bombs, and any option of any real diplomacy or taking up one of Iran's compromise offers is simply ignored .
And, the US has consistently prevented its allies from negotiation with Iran too. The US deliberately undermined the negotiations between IRan and the EU-3 states (France, Germany, UK) held under the "Paris Agreement". As Trita Parsi (a REAL Iran expert, BTW, who actually speaks the language and has lived there) wrote:
Clearly incapable of compelling the US to budge, the European strategy has ever since been to procrastinate on the talks in the hope that Iran would fail to call the EU’s bluff, while searching for an exit strategy that would enable the EU to pass the blame on to Iran. The EU found its perfect scapegoat in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s new conservative president, whose reputation was damaged shattered prior to taking office
In short, the US has done everything it can to undermine negotiations and close off any chance of any real "diplomatic solution" to this conflict.
And of course, as can be expected, Perkovich is trying to belittle the IAEA report on Iran and is criticising ElBaradei, which is quite vogue nowdays: The IAEA report? Oh, that's not "germane". It is merely a "historical document". It doesn't count. Ignore it. The IAEA is "putting itself in the middle" etc etc.
No George, the IAEA is just doing its job.
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