Iran Invited to Afghanistan Regional Summit
As James Dobbins says, the best way to start talking to Iran is to stop not talking to Iran. In other words, if a situation arises in which American officials would ordinarily be talking to Iranian officials if the Iranian officials weren’t so Iranian, just have them talk. And that, it seems, is what we’re about to do as Hillary Clinton talks about convening an international summit on Afghanistan:
At a news conference later, Clinton said: “It is expected that Iran would be invited as a neighbor of Afghanistan.”
She described the conference as “a way to bring all the stakeholders and interested parties together” while stressing that it so far is only a proposal.
I think this is the right way to go. Spencer Ackerman reads the tea leaves a bit. But to get a bit more pointed, it’s not clear to me where this leaves Dennis Ross as a double-super secret Iran envoy. This would presumably be Richard Holbrooke’s meeting. And Ross’s public statements on dialogue with Iran have focused on secret back-channels, which is the reverse of an invitation to a big international conference.
10 Responses to “Iran Invited to Afghanistan Regional Summit”
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March 5th, 2009 at 3:59 pm
Why can’t we do both super-secret and public communication with Iran? This kind of conference is actually the perfect opening for Iran and the U.S. to make some rapprochements, i.e. relating to a country in which both countries have strategic interests, possibly compatible interests even. Meanwhile, Ross is in the shadows cajoling Iran to bend on its nuclear program while offering various carrots and sticks. In other words, make the cooperation as public as possible and the coercion private, at least until the coercion blossoms into cooperation. Multiple channels, multiple agendas, all pointing in the same direction; that’s how smart diplomacy is done.
March 5th, 2009 at 4:22 pm
Matt, I don’t think that the two diplomatic approaches (public and private) are mutually-exclusive. In fact, for any approach to Iran to have a chance of being productive necessarily needs to include both.
March 5th, 2009 at 5:03 pm
Since the whole point of all this “diplomacy” is to get Iran to do something it can not and will not do, I don’t see any way for results – unless of course the whole thing is a charade to enable Obama to “blink” and back off the whole nonsensical “Iran nuclear crisis” nonsense.
In other words, perhaps Obama wants to “defuse” the nuclear crisis by shifting the discussion slowly over the next fours years to other matters, such as Afghanistan, to the point where he can just abandon it.
I really don’t think that’s going to go over well with the Israelis.
March 5th, 2009 at 5:19 pm
How is inviting a country’s neighbor to a conference on the future of a country even remotely controversial? Of course you’d invite Iran to a conference on Afghanistan. They share water and insurgents, and a whole lot more. If Israel wants to bitch about it, let them bitch all they want. What are they going to do about it? Reject us as the tit they need to suck on?
March 6th, 2009 at 6:52 am
Re fostert
Reject us as the tit they need to suck on?
What the new Netanyahu government should do is to stop sucking on the US tit. Period, end of discussion.
March 6th, 2009 at 9:04 am
How is inviting a country’s neighbor to a conference on the future of a country even remotely controversial? Of course you’d invite Iran to a conference on Afghanistan.
How quickly we forget the way Republicans like to run things…
March 6th, 2009 at 10:45 am
SLC: “What the new Netanyahu government should do is to stop sucking on the US tit. Period, end of discussion.”
It will never happen. The Zionistas will grump about it…and then pick up their welfare check from the USG. The “economic miracle” is never miraculous enough to release the suction.
April 8th, 2009 at 7:58 pm
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April 10th, 2009 at 5:55 am
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