Should The President Even Talk To Them?

(11 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

Another countries leaders are threatening your country and threatening your countries allies with very aggressive rhetoric of “annihilation” while they appear to be building nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, and have a navy that can affect access to and shipping in the Persian Gulf and the flow of oil out of the gulf.

Should the President and/or his Foreign Policy designates sit down at the negotiating table and talk to them face to face like adults, or just dismiss them as terrorists?

Those are some of the questions on the minds of many Iranians these days, as they try to make sense of US Foreign Policy signals.

Historian, Investigative Journalist on US foreign policy, and military policy analyst Gareth Porter has just returned from a fact-finding mission to Iran.

Gareth responds to recent Obama statements toward Iran, pointing out that Iran has a long history of walking away from negotiations with the West and this debate over the value of participation in negotiations is raring up again against the backdrop of Obama’s election victory.

The debate in Iran over entering negotiations, primarily to address Iran’s nuclear power program and support for Hamas and Hezbollah, has now split between those in the Iranian leadership who believe that Obama’s victory represents a change in direction in US foreign policy that may validate Iran’s participation and those who believe that the forces in Washington are too strong to permit such a change in direction.

Gareth explains that since Obama’s appointment of Hilary Clinton as Secretary of State, a key player in the passing of the controversial Kyl-Lieberman Amendment that labeled the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization, served as a signal to most that Obama would not bring the change of course that Iran was hoping for.

Real News: December 11, 2008

Iran debates negotiations

Gareth Porter: While Obama talks carrots and sticks, Iran questions sitting at the table.