The U.S. is fielding accusations that it’s undermining dialogue with Iran by dismissing a letter about religious faith from the country’s president and pushing for a regime change while sidestepping diplomacy.
The accusations come as Iran continues to receive criticism of its desire to develop a nuclear power program, which some countries believe could be used to create nuclear weapons.
Fears of a U.S. attack continue to create a buzz in Washington, prompting an Oregon member of the U.S. House of Representatives to introduce a resolution reminding President Bush that Congressional authorization is required for an attack.
U.S. diplomats say that Iran poses a threat to Israel and the U.S. if it gains capabilities to build nuclear weapons.
The United States, France, Britain and Germany are calling for a resolution to sanction Iran and give incentives to suspend its uranium enrichment efforts, but the clash continues over whether those efforts are for weapons or energy.
The U.S. government hasn’t dealt directly with the Iranian government since 1979 during the Iranian Revolution, when more than 50 people were taken from the U.S. embassy in Tehran, Iran, and held hostage for 444 days.
Under Secretary of Political Affairs R. Nicholas Burns said in November that “Iran is the only country in the world today with which the United States has no sustained direct contact.”
The first correspondence took place Monday when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sent an 18-page letter to Bush discussing shared religious principles and calling on Bush to look at his faith as a way to combat the world’s problems.
Amir Rasti, an Iranian graduate student at the University, said he’s disappointed with the way the U.S., particularly Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, handled the letter. For not communicating in 27 years, Rasti said, this was a positive step by the Iranian president to begin a dialogue.
“(Ahmadinejad) has tried to find what he has in common with President Bush, and he found the one God,” Rasti said. As Abrahamic religions, Christianity and Islam share the same God. “Allah” is Arabic for “God.”
Rice responded to the letter by categorizing it as “broadly philosophical in character” and unrelated to Iran’s nuclear proliferations.
“There is nothing in this letter that in any way addresses any of the issues really that are on the table in the international community,” Rice told the Associated Press Editorial Board in New York on Monday.
Rice said she didn’t see the letter as “an opening.”
The New York Times reported Wednesday that the letter left Ahmadinejad open to criticism from Iranians who might see the contact with Bush as a betrayal. “I think this guy has taken a positive step to try to start to talk to the Americans in his own way,” Rasti said.
“It would be very sad if it was not answered by the U.S.,” he said.
The history
In the 1970s, Iran was becoming a modernized state with a ruler favored by the West, but students returning from the U.S., having experienced the freedoms of democracy, demanded a parliamentary system of government to accompany the modernization of the military and education systems.
Through an agreement with the U.S., Iran began sending students to study in America.
In a speech Burns said more than 200,000 Iranians students were studying in the U.S. in the 1970s – more than twice as many from any single foreign country in the U.S. today.
Ron Wixman, a University geography professor who studies geo-politics in the Middle East, said these students came to America and tasted democracy and the freedom to vote.
“They couldn’t believe these freedoms and they wanted them,” he said.
Upon returning to Iran, the 1979 Iranian Revolution began with students demanding a parliamentary government and opposing the existing government in Iran, which was backed by the U.S.
“We thought students were Soviet spies,” Wixman said, because “how could we say we’re opposed to democracy? We couldn’t, so we said we’re opposed to the students.”
In response to the revolution, Israel and the U.S. trained and armed Iran’s secret police, who were “utterly brutal,” murdering and torturing more than 100,000 Iranians, Wixman said.
After a successful overthrow of the government, the highest ranking Islamic leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, used peasants to overthrow the democratic government put in place by the students and establish an anti-Western, anti-Soviet state in 1981, Wixman said.
In response, the U.S. and the Soviets backed Saddam Hussein – the self-proclaimed “leader of the Arab world” – to weaken the then-fundamentalist Iran, Wixman said, and Israel pushed for the U.S. to invade Iran.
The bill
With tensions growing over Iran’s nuclear ambitions, the U.S. House of Representatives in January passed the “Iran Freedom Support Act,” which supports putting pro-democracy groups inside and outside Iran in an attempt to undermine Ahmadinejad’s conservative Islamic regime. Two of Oregon’s five representatives, Democrats Peter DeFazio and Earl Blumenauer, voted against the bill, but it passed 397 to 21.
According to the bill, “Congress declares that it should be the policy of the United States to support independent human rights and peaceful pro-democracy forces in Iran,” which includes holding the current regime accountable “for its threatening behavior.”
Opponents of the bill have said the sanctions and pro-democracy imposition will only unite Iranians behind Ahmadinejad.
The bill also tightened economic sanctions on Iran and penalties against countries and individuals investing more than $20 million in energy sectors.
DeFazio said in a statement released at the end of April that he voted in favor of previous bills supporting sanctions on Iran but he can’t support this one because it favors regime change.
Blumenauer said in a statement that he’s worried about the result of the bill, especially considering reports from the Pentagon planning a nuclear attack on Iran.
The resolution
According to a CIA report published in 2000, “Iran sought nuclear-related equipment, material, and technical expertise from a variety of sources, especially Russia,” and Iran’s nuclear reactor could be used to advance Iran’s nuclear weapons aspirations.
In 2002, the U.S. accused Iran of seeking to develop nuclear weapons and published images of two nuclear sites under construction. From February to May 2003, the International Atomic Energy Agency inspected the sites and found that they were “solely to provide fuel for power plants,” according to BBC. In June, Iran didn’t report certain nuclear activities, but IAEA said Iran hadn’t breached the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty.
According to the Iran bill, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty allows countries to develop and use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, but the bill states that Iran has manipulated part of the treaty in an effort manufacture nuclear weapons.
Wixman said he doesn’t believe there are nuclear weapons in Iran, just as there weren’t any in Iraq.
For the same reason, the U.S. didn’t invade North Korea. Bush wouldn’t send troops into a country knowing it could annihilate them, he said.
Rasti said the problem is lack of trust between Iran and the U.S. and said the main problem with the U.S. is its desire for regime change in Iran.
“I don’t think the U.S. problem will be solved … by stopping (nuclear proliferations),” he said.
He also said he thinks the Iranian government should listen to the international community but that nuclear energy would be good for the country.
“It doesn’t work to sacrifice all we have for this. Maybe we should pause for a while and build trust,” Rasti said.
With pressure mounting over what’s seen by the U.S. government as an Iranian nuclear threat, DeFazio has garnered support from 32 other House members to co-sponsor a resolution reminding Bush to seek Congressional authorization be
fore attacking Iran.
“There is an undercurrent of worry in Washington and some people feel, along with myself, that the way they’re presenting this is eerily reminiscent of the war in Iraq,” DeFazio said.