Iran president rattles cage of U.S. foreign policy establishment
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Fri Sep 29 17:57:33 EDT 2006
<http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/21/world/middleeast/21iran.html?hp&ex=1158897600&en=fd75007868ac87af&ei=5094&partner=homepage>http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/21/world/middleeast/21iran.html?hp&ex=1158897600&en=fd75007868ac87af&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Iran president rattles cage of U.S. foreign policy establishment
Iran's Leader Relishes 2nd Chance to Make Waves
By DAVID E. SANGER The New York Times Thursday, 21 September 2006
NEW YORK - When President Bush and his advisers decided to allow
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran into the country to address the
United Nations, their strategy was simple: containment.
There would be no visits to other cities where he could denounce
Washington or question Israel's legitimacy. There would be no
opportunities, beyond his speech to the General Assembly, to turn
questions about his nuclear intentions into repeated diatribes about
America's nuclear arsenal.
It turned out that Mr. Ahmadinejad had a Plan B.
The scope of his determination to dominate not only the airwaves but
the debate became evident yesterday evening, when he entered a hotel
conference room on the East Side with a jaunty smile, a wave and an
air of supreme confidence.
Over the objections of the administration and Jewish groups that
boycotted the event, Mr. Ahmadinejad, the man who has become the
defiant face of Iran, squared off with the nation's foreign policy
establishment, parrying questions for an hour and three-quarters with
two dozen members of the Council on Foreign Relations, then ending
the evening by asking whether they were simply shills for the Bush
administration.
Never raising his voice and thanking each questioner with a tone
that oozed polite hostility, he spent 40 minutes questioning the
evidence that the Holocaust ever happened - "I think we should allow
more impartial studies to be done on this," he said after hearing an
account of an 81-year-old member, the insurance mogul Maurice R.
Greenberg, who saw the Dachau concentration camp as Germany fell -
and he refused to even consider Washington's proposal for Russia to
provide Iran with nuclear reactor fuel, and take it back once it is
used. (Without the capacity to enrich fuel on its own soil Iran would
be unable to make fuel suitable for a nuclear weapon.)
Jewish leaders object to Iranian's appearance
He traced the history of 50 years of unfilled deals with the United
States, Germany, France and others - skipping over the Iranian
revolution and the hostage-taking that followed - and concluded, "How
can we rely on these partners." His solution? The United States
should shut down its own fuel production and "within five years, we
will sell you our own fuel, with a 50 percent discount!" He settled
back into his seat with a broad smile that some in the group
described as a smirk.
The decision by the council's president, Richard N. Haass, to invite
Mr. Ahmadinejad to the session touched off a rare outcry protest in
an organization whose meetings are usually as staid as the portraits
of long-forgotten diplomats on its walls.
Mr. Haass, who ran the policy planning branch of the State
Department during Mr. Bush's first term, first had to fend off senior
administration officials who had argued that he should not give Mr.
Ahmadinejad the legitimacy of a hearing - especially with the likes
of Brent Scowcroft, who served as national security adviser under
President Bush's father, or Robert D. Blackwill, who directed Iraq
policy at the White House under Condoleezza Rice.
"It's fair to say that Dr. Rice thought this was a bad idea," one
senior State Department official said. "A really, really bad idea."
So did leaders of several Jewish groups, whom Mr. Haass invited -
and who promptly asked if the council would have invited Hitler in
the 1930's. "Some of us considered quitting to make it clear how
offensive this is," said Abraham H. Foxman, the national director of
the Anti-Defamation League, who was one of the Jewish leaders whose
attendance Mr. Haass sought.
Members reconsider mass resignation
But after a flurry of phone calls, including with Elie Wiesel, the
writer and Holocaust survivor, they decided against a mass
resignation - particularly after the council made the session a
"meeting" rather than a dinner. (There were light hors d'oeuvres on
the side; Mr. Ahmadinejad never touched them.)
"It is more offensive to break bread with the guy," Mr. Foxman said.
"I thought dinner was crossing the line." But the council pointed out
that it had served as host for many world leaders equally skilled at
repressing dissidents, developing suspected weapons programs,
shutting down a free press and denouncing Israel.
"We've had Castro," said Lisa Shields, the council's communications
director, ticking off the gallery of leaders Washington considered
rogues. "We've had Arafat, and Mugabe. We've had Gerry Adams."
The greeting yesterday evening was not exactly overwhelming. There
were no introductory handshakes, no diplomatic niceties. All of the
Americans who were invited to attend, including four journalists,
were members of the council. Iran's effort to bring in television
cameras was deflected, apparently because the council feared that the
session would be used for political purposes in Iran, where Mr.
Ahmadinejad is presumably eager to show that even if President Bush
refused to meet him, he got his message across.
In fact he did - meeting academics in the morning and religious
leaders at midday, and speeding from the council meeting for another
television interview. He did most of this without leaving the
Intercontinental Hotel on 48th Street in Manhattan.
'Why such prominence to a small portion of those 60 million?'
The council would not say how many of the invitees had refused to
attend. But members said they knew of more than a half-dozen, from
the publisher Mort Zuckerman to the former Secretary of State
Madeleine K. Albright. It is unclear why some declined. A few
claimed scheduling conflicts, rather than moral objections.
The handful who had a chance to quiz the Iranian president went out
of their way, within the limits of diplomatic etiquette, to make
clear to Mr. Ahmadinejad that they thought his characterizations of
Israel and the Holocaust were repugnant and that his nuclear strategy
was self-defeating.
He gave no ground.
When Martin S. Indyk, a former American ambassador to Israel, told
Mr. Ahmadinejad that Iran "did everything possible to destroy''
efforts to bring peace between Israel and the Palestinians, the
president said, "If you believe Iran is the reason for the failure,
you are making a second mistake.'' Why, he asked, should the
Palestinians be asked to "pay for an event they had nothing to do
with'' in World War II, saying that they had nothing to do with the
systematic killing of Jews - if those killings, he added, had
happened at all.
"In World War II about 60 million people were killed,'' he said at
one point, when pressed again on his refusal to accept that the
Holocaust happened. "Two million were military. Why is such
prominence given to a small portion of those 60 million?''
A few minutes later, he asked a question himself: "In the Council on
Foreign Relations, is there any voice of support for the
Palestinians?''
'Heading for a massive confrontation'
Mr. Ahmadinejad's habit of answering every question about Iranian
policy with a question about American policy was clearly wearing on
some of the members, but at the end they acknowledged that he was
about as skillful an interlocutor as they had ever encountered. "He
is a master of counterpunch, deception, circumlocution,'' Mr.
Scowcroft said, shaking his head. Mr. Blackwill emerged from the
conversation wondering how the United States would ever be able to
negotiate with this Iranian government.
"If this man represents the prevailing government opinion in Tehran,
we are heading for a massive confrontation with Iran," he said.
In fact, on the main issue speeding the two countries toward
confrontation, Iran's nuclear program, the president was unwilling to
discuss specifics. He insisted that he was fully cooperating with the
International Atomic Energy Agency, even though it had pages of
questions his government refused to answer.
Instead, he steered the whole conversation toward Iran's rights
under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, ignoring an effort by
Ashton B. Carter, a Harvard professor, to get him to answer whether
the nuclear effort was worth the cost to Iranian society.
"The U.S. doesn't speak for the whole world,'' Mr. Ahmadinejad
responded, noting that at a meeting of nonaligned nations in Cuba
over the weekend "118 countries defended the right of Iran to
enrich.''
And as he left, it was with a jab to his hosts. "At the beginning of
the session, you said you were an independent group,'' he said. "But
almost everything that I was asked came from a government position.''
Then he smiled, thanked everyone and left the room with a light
step.
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