|
US blocked plans to disarm hezbollah { September 25 2007 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/25/142247http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/25/142247
Tuesday, September 25th, 2007
The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States
In a speech at Columbia University, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad defended Iran's right to nuclear power but denied Iran was seeking to build nuclear weapons. Ahmadinejad's appearance sparked widespread protests at Columbia. We speak with Trita Parsi, author of "Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and the United States" and Baruch professor Ervand Abrahamian, co-author of "Targeting Iran." [includes rush transcript]
* Ervand Abrahamian, Iran expert and CUNY Distinguished Professor of History at Baruch College, City University of New York. He is the author of several books on Iran and the co-author of a new book from City Lights called "Targeting Iran."
* Trita Parsi, President of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), the largest Iranian-American organization in the US. He is the author of "Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States."
------------------------------------------
EXCERPT:
AMY GOODMAN: The United States foiling Iran's plan to withdraw support from Hamas and Hezbollah.
TRITA PARSI: We talked about that before, that there was a 2003 proposal that the Iranians sent over to the United States trying to find a larger accommodation between the United States and Iran, in which they basically put all the different issues on the table, including an offer, within the framework of the negotiations, to disarm Hezbollah and turn it into a mere political organization -- had that happened, there would probably not have been a war last year between Israel and Lebanon -- secondly, to end all support for Islamic jihad and Hamas and encourage the Palestinians to go a political route, rather than military route, in their dealings with Israel.
But what’s revealed in the book, as well, that has not been out in the media a lot is that prior to giving this proposal to the United States, the Iranians were fishing it around in Europe, trying to create some support for it. And, most importantly, they went to places that they knew Israelis were going to be. And they were presenting the framework, the concept of this grand bargain, and they wanted to make sure that the Israelis felt that this would not be something that would come at their expense, because they were concerned that the Israelis would try to undermine it. So they were basically sending a signal: Look, if we can have this accommodation with the United States, we will disentangle and basically not be so involved in the Israeli-Palestinian issue anymore.
|
|
