Image by Kat via Flickr
with Noam Chomsky
raceforiran on Jun 11, 2013
On May 14, 2013, the Technology and Culture Forum at MIT sponsored an event, “Iran and American Foreign Policy: Where Did the U.S. Go wrong?”, featuring Noam Chomsky and Flynt and Hillary Leverett, authors of the controversial “Going to Tehran: Why the United States Must Come to Terms with the Islamic Republic of Iran.” Hillary Mann Leverett starts 18:20 into the video, Flynt Leverett at 37:00, and Noam Chomsky at 54:00.
Image by Kat via Flickr
with Gareth Porter
Writer, Dandelion Salad
June 14, 2013
TheRealNews Jun 13, 2013
Gareth Porter interviews veteran US officials about why US policy towards Iran needs to change.
By Paul Craig Roberts
June 16, 2009 “Information Clearing House”
How much attention do elections in Japan, India, Argentina, or any other country, get from the US media? How many Americans and American journalists even know who is in political office in other countries besides England, France, and Germany? Who can name the political leaders of Switzerland, Holland, Brazil, Japan, or even China?
Yet, many know of Iran’s President Ahmadinejad. The reason is obvious. He is daily demonized in the US media.
The US media’s demonization of Ahmadinejad itself demonstrates American ignorance. The President of Iran is not the ruler. He is not the commander-in-chief of the armed forces. He cannot set policies outside the boundaries set by Iran’s rulers, the ayatollahs who are not willing for the Iranian Revolution to be overturned by American money in some color-coded “revolution.”
Iranians have a bitter experience with the United States government. Their first democratic election, after emerging from occupied and colonized status, in the 1950s was overturned by the US government. The US government installed in place of the elected candidate a dictator who tortured and murdered dissidents who thought Iran should be an independent country and not ruled by an American puppet.
By Jeff Stein
ICH
May 31, 2009 “CQ” May 28, 2009
Iran supplied U.S. diplomats with the location of Taliban military units in Afghanistan after the initial bombing campaign in the fall of 2001 failed to rout them, according to former officials in the George W. Bush administration.
The Islamic regime also gave the Bush administration “really substantive cooperation” on al Qaeda after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, at one point providing Washington with a list of 220 suspects and their whereabouts, said one official, former White House National Security Council Iran expert Hillary Mann Leverett.
Leverett said that in December 2002, after the U.S. gave Tehran the names of five al Qaeda suspects it believed were in Iran, the regime found two, which they delivered to the U.S. air base at Baghram, in Afghanistan.But the budding relationship died on the vine.Hardliners in the Bush administration prohibited Mann and Ryan Crocker, two of the principal diplomats dealing with the Iranians, from building on the contacts to pursue al Qaeda.
[…]
via ICH
By Charles Freeman
ICH
March 11, 2009 “WSJ”
To all who supported me or gave me words of encouragement during the controversy of the past two weeks, you have my gratitude and respect.
You will by now have seen the statement by Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair reporting that I have withdrawn my previous acceptance of his invitation to chair the National Intelligence Council. Continue reading
The Israeli cabinet has agreed to release five Lebanese prisoners in return for the bodies of two Isreali soldiers captured in 2006.
Al Jazeera’s David Chater reports from Jerusalem on a deal that is highly symboloic for both sides.
June 26, 2008
Axis Of Appeasement
Keith talks to Hillary Mann Leverett about the deal struck with North Korea by the Bush administration. Continue reading
By John H. Richardson
Esquire
10/18/2007
Two former high-ranking policy experts from the Bush Administration say the U.S. has been gearing up for a war with Iran for years, despite claiming otherwise. It’ll be Iraq all over again.
In the years after 9/11, Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann worked at the highest levels of the Bush administration as Middle East policy experts for the National Security Council. Mann conducted secret negotiations with Iran. Leverett traveled with Colin Powell and advised Condoleezza Rice. They each played crucial roles in formulating policy for the region leading up to the war in Iraq. But when they left the White House, they left with a growing sense of alarm — not only was the Bush administration headed straight for war with Iran, it had been set on this course for years. That was what people didn’t realize. It was just like Iraq, when the White House was so eager for war it couldn’t wait for the UN inspectors to leave. The steps have been many and steady and all in the same direction. And now things are getting much worse. We are getting closer and closer to the tripline, they say.
Dandelion Salad 