Most of you who follow politics at all are likely aware of the videotaped message President Obama had made for the Iranian people last week or the week before; the exact date escapes me. The message was innovative in that it wasn't directed at the Iranian President, or clerics, or government at all but was instead a direct declaration the Iranian people.
Before this message was delivered the Iranian government had been turning a cold-shoulder to all US entreaties, of which President Obama had made several since taking office. But now it seems, as you can read in the Times of London article below, that President Ahmadinejad is being forced by pressure from the citizenry of Iran to more fully engage the American diplomatic effort.
Obviously it must remain to be seen what will come of this, and the Iranian Government has proven itself to be duplicitous on many occasions. However, it's important to remember that the Iranian people have never been as hostile to the Americans as the religious/political (same thing) leaders are, despite our direct support of and collusion with the maniacal reign of the Shah in the 1970s. I think employing the media in innovative ways to spread his message is a hallmark of the Obama campaign and Presidency, and this is just another manifestation of that same idea.
Quote:
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says Iran is ready to talk to 'honest' Barack Obama
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article6062688.ece
(Raheb Homavandi/Reuters)
Iran’s hardline President said yesterday that his country would welcome talks with America should Barack Obama prove “honest”, a clear sign that the US leader’s recent videotaped message to the Iranian people had increased pressure on Tehran to respond.
The conciliatory comments by President Ahmadinejad show that he does not want to appear extremist towards the new US Administration before elections in June. There is an enormous desire among most Iranian voters for an end to its international isolation.
“The Iranian nation welcomes a hand extended to it, should it really and truly be based on honesty, justice and respect,” Mr Ahmadinejad said in a speech broadcast live on state television. He was responding fully for the first time to Mr Obama’s video message beamed into Iran last month, at the Persian New Year, in which the US President urged co-operation and dialogue.
“But if, God forbid, the extended hand has an honest appearance but contains no honesty in content, it will meet the same response the Iranian nation gave to Mr Bush ,” Mr Ahmadinejad warned.
The Obama Administration’s policy towards Iran is under significant review and is aimed at resolving perhaps the most difficult foreign policy challenge the President faces: how to halt Tehran’s nuclear weapons programme.
Despite Mr Ahmadinejad’s more moderate tone, he also, in almost the same breath, made clear how difficult it will be for the West to halt its nuclear ambitions, an issue on which most Iranians are united in a feeling of nationalist pride.
Today is National Nuclear Day in Iran and in his speech Mr Ahmadinejad is expected to claim that the country has mastered the final stage of nuclear fuel production.
“I will have good nuclear news for the honoured Iranian nation tomorrow,” he announced in the central city of Isfahan, where the regime has a heavy-water reactor that the West fears is being used to produce fuel for a nuclear weapon.
One breakthrough that the Iranian President could claim today is the production of natural uranium pellets at the Isfahan heavy-water reactor and the assembling of nuclear fuel rods into bundles, which is the final stage in the process to produce nuclear fuel.
Most foreign analysts believe that Tehran has yet to prove that it has mastered industrial-scale enrichment of uranium. In a report on February 19 the International Atomic Energy Agency said that it could not verify if the Arak reactor at Isfahan was being used for peaceful, civilian uses — as Tehran claims — because international inspectors had been barred since last August.
Vali Nasr, a senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and an Iran expert, told The Times that the sincerity and warmth of Mr Obama’s words to the Iranian people last month was a serious challenge to the Iranian Government because there was “such a hunger among the people for an improvement of Iran’s place in the world”. Mr Ahmadinejad was particularly vulnerable, he said, because he faced a serious presidential challenge on the June 12 election from the former Prime Minister, Mir-Hossein Moussavi, a reformist but also one of the architects of the 1979 Iranian Revolution.
The six powers co-ordinating international policy towards Iran have asked the EU foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, to invite the Iranian Government for talks, they said in a joint statement after a meeting in London. The group, made up of Britain, France, Germany, the US, China and Russia, added: “We strongly urge Iran to take advantage of this opportunity to engage seriously with all of us in a spirit of mutual respect.”
Other issues, though, yesterday underscored how perilous and fragile relations with Iran remain. Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, said the Administration was deeply concerned by reports that an American journalist jailed in Iran since January had been charged with espionage. Roxana Saberi, 31, is being held in Evin prison, north of Tehran. “We wish for her speedy release and return to her family,” Mrs Clinton said.
Another potentially destabilising player in Mr Obama’s efforts to engage Iran is the new Israeli Government of Binyamin Netanyahu, a hawk who repeatedly pledged during his election campaign that he would do “everything necessary” to stop Iran attaining a nuclear bomb.
Joe Biden, the US Vice-President, warned Mr Netanyahu on Tuesday that he would be “ill advised” to launch a military strike against Iran, which Washington believes would greatly destabilise an already volatile region.
-------------------- After one comes, through contact with it's administrators, no longer to cherish greatly the law as a remedy in abuses, then the bottle becomes a sovereign means of direct action. If you cannot throw it at least you can always drink out of it. - Ernest Hemingway If it is life that you feel you are missing I can tell you where to find it. In the law courts, in business, in government. There is nothing occurring in the streets. Nothing but a dumbshow composed of the helpless and the impotent. -Cormac MacCarthy He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God. - Aeschylus
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