Informed Comment Homepage

Thoughts on the Middle East, History and Religion

Header Right

Donate

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Google+
  • Email
  • RSS
  • Featured
  • US politics
  • Middle East
  • Environment
  • US Foreign Policy
  • Energy
  • Economy
  • Politics
  • About
  • Archives
  • Submissions

© 2023 Informed Comment

  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
Uncategorized

Debate Fact Check 3

Juan Cole 09/27/2008

Tweet
Share
Reddit
Email
0 Shares

Did Henry Kissinger advise direct talks with Iran at the highest levels?

Yes.

Kissinger gave an interview with Bloomberg Television News Service on March 14, 2008:

‘ “One should be prepared to negotiate, and I think we should be prepared to negotiate about Iran,” Kissinger . . . said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. Asked whether he meant the U.S. should hold direct talks, Kissinger, 84, responded: “Yes, I think we should.” . . . ‘

Not only did he advocate such talks, he personally engaged in them!

‘ “I’ve been in semi-private, totally private talks with Iranians,” he said. “They’ve had put before them approaches that with a little flexibility on their part would, in my view, surely lead to negotiations.” ‘

Kissinger added:

‘ “It’s not really the willingness to talk, it’s so far the inability to define what we are trying to accomplish,” Kissinger said. “The negotiations depend on a balance of incentives and penalties. Have we got those right at every point? Not at every point.” . . . The Nobel Peace Prize winner said any direct talks between the U.S. and Iran on issues such as the nuclear dispute would be most likely to succeed if they first involved only diplomatic staff and progressed to the level of secretary of state before the heads of state meet.’

So Kissinger envisaged the heads of state meeting. N.B. that would be the US president and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (Ahmadinejad as president is a lesser figure in the Iranian system.)

He explicitly said that the talks should begin “without conditions.”

Kissinger did advise a progression from lower level to higher level, despite his call for no pre-conditions.

Kissinger didn’t seem embarrassed at all by the kind of considerations McCain instanced in the debate, of legitimating the Iranian government and the way it talks dirty about Israel by a US president’s meeting with its top leaders.

The difference is that Kissinger is a foreign policy realist and McCain is surrounding himself with Neoconservatives.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

About the Author

Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Follow him on Twitter at @jricole or the Informed Comment Facebook Page

Primary Sidebar

STAY INFORMED

Join our newsletter and have sharp analysis delivered to your inbox every day.

Twitter

Follow Juan Cole @jricole or Informed Comment @infcomment on Twitter

Facebook



Sign up for our newsletter

Informed Comment © 2023 All Rights Reserved

Posting....