The New Iranian Hostage Crisis
The current chief Iranian negotiator is Mohammad Javad Larijani, the secretary of the Iranian Human Rights Council, the director of the Institute for Studies in Theoretical Physics and Mathematics, and an advisor to the supreme leader. He is the eldest of five very powerful brothers including Ali (who negotiated with the George W. Bush administration) and Chief Justice Sadeqh Larijani. Mohammad Larijani has plenty of experience in direct, bilateral negotiations with the United States. He goes back to the Reagan years, having met with Robert McFarlane in Iran in May, 1986.
Mohammad recently gave himself a rhetorical award for courage, declaring that Iran would negotiate with the United States “even at the bottom of hell,” should that be in its interests. He needn’t worry about the venue; his most frequent trips have been to Switzerland.
Meanwhile, talks go on at lower levels, such as the so-called “Track Two” meetings involving think-tank intellectuals and former U.S. officials such as Thomas Pickering and Frank Wisner, and at least one recent get-together in Switzerland involving a former G.H.W. Bush official. Moreover, the Swiss government — our official diplomatic proxy for discussions with the Iranian regime — has been active. The Swiss ambassador to Tehran, Livia Leu Agosti, spent several hours with a Khamenei aide shortly before the November elections, and a few days after Obama’s victory, Mohammad Larijani flew to Switzerland to meet with Foreign Minister Didier Burkhalter.
The Iranian-Swiss talks produced an outline of what an acceptable agreement might look like. Both sides were to make good-faith gestures at the outset. The Iranians promised to let the IAEA return to inspect Parchin, and they agreed to new talks with the so-called 5 + 1 (US, Germany, France, England, China, and Russia). The Iranians have delivered on both counts.
For their part, the Iranians had several demands, including easing sanctions. But their number one requirement for an American gesture is right out of the historic playbook: hostage releases.
Both Americans and Iranians are in captivity. The Iranians insist on the return of the 48 ”pilgrims” captured by the Free Syrian Army in Damascus last August. Those men are not pious tourists at all; they’re mostly from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, and their superiors in Tehran badly want them back, in no small part because some of them are senior officers who know a great deal about Iran’s global operations.
In exchange, the Iranians are offering to release several Americans under arrest in Iran. The most recent American arrested there is Saeed Abedini, a pastor who reportedly converted to Christianity in the United States; the list includes a former Marine, perhaps a former FBI agent, and an elderly Iranian-American scholar. And there are others, whose names have not appeared in any account I have read, who the Iranians believe to be CIA agents.
Even if the White House is willing, it may well be impossible for the United States to deliver. FSA spokesmen have been bitterly critical of America’s failure to help them; why should they release such valuable prisoners at a time when they are fighting Iranian-backed killers from the Revolutionary Guards and Hezbollah?
Nobody knows how the secret negotiations will work out, or indeed whether they will resume in the near future. But everyone should know that direct Iran-U.S. talks are very old news, that they’ve continued as recently as the last couple of months, and there’s no particular sign that any breakthrough is imminent.
UPDATE: Thanks to Instapundit, the one and only!
BIG UPDATE: The Iranian killers released! http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/01/09/the-prisoner-swap-in-syria/
Nice to know that American senior bureaucrats and think-tankers in comfortable digs in Manhattan and Switzerland were playing games with agents of the Khomeinist mullahs while American soldiers in Iraq were being shredded by EFPs deployed by agents of the Khomeinist mullahs.
Maybe if Nick Burns had spent some time in a Humvee in Mosul in July rather than all that time in five star Manhattan and Geneva hotels, he’d have been a bit less patient with this bazaari bait and switch.
In our Country one class of men makes war and leaves another to fight it out.
In our Country one class of men makes war and leaves another to fight it out.
Phil Ochs summed it up in his 60′s protest song with the chorus
“It’s always the old to lead us to a war and always the young to fall
Look at all we’ve won with sword and a gun
and tell me was it worth it all?”
We overthrew Communism and Nazism. Yes, it was worth it.
And you know what we won in Israel with a sword and a gun? Our lives.
The overthrow of Nazism and Communism certainly was worth it.
But since then, the US has done nothing but side with Muslims every chance it gets – against our own interests and Israel’s.
Was any of that worth it?
No.
“In our Country one class of men makes war and leaves another to fight it out.”
And they are THE SAME MEN (America’s noblemen) who have brought YOU to the perfect victory during the cold war without bloodshed. Right?!
I agree, it is terrible –and yet what other options exist? Shall we not talk to them and let things fall where they may? These talks have little official meaning to either side.
To the extent that they’re willing to talk, I think it is usually worth the time, if only to know what their regime might be thinking. There is no glory or honor of making war over a misunderstanding.
the issue is NOT whether to talk. We are talking. I am trying to focus attention on the talks thenselves, and to eliminate the false claim that there haven’t been any talks.
Drae Mr. Weeden.
What do you make of the news story reported in the European Union Times last week in which it reported that Hillary Clinton was seriously injured and Navy Seal Job Price was killed in a landing accident at Ahwaz International airport in Iran? We are acquanted with Job Price and the government told his family that he committed suicide. Noone believes that story. Before his death he told his wife that he was going on the most dangerous assignment he had been on. The citation to the story follows:
http://www.eutimes.net/2013/01/obama-warned-to-prepare-for-hillary-clinton-death/
it’s false, so far as i know. The Navy would not lie to a family about the death of a SEAL. And Hillary was elsewhere.
“The Navy would not lie to a family about the death of a SEAL”
Just shot coffee through my nose…..
You dont know the Navy very well do you?
“To the extent that they’re willing to talk, I think it is usually worth the time, if only to know what their regime might be thinking. There is no glory or honor of making war over a misunderstanding.”
Apparently you didn’t read the article. Every single president has “talked,” only to learn they were being played for fools. And for good reason, they fooled themselves into believing that they were so gifted in charm and negotiating ability the Iranians would deal with them in good faith. There is certainly no glory or honor of making war over a misunderstanding. There will be no misunderstanding when the Iranians finally do finish developing their nuclear weapons and use them, that they successfully conned self-deluding people such as yourself over an unbelievable period of decades into just giving peace a chance.
There are two issues here: First, is whether we should talk. We agree that we should, even if only in an unofficial capacity.
Second is what we make of the things we hear at such meetings. Of course we should be suspicious and critical. We are in an undeclared state of hostility toward this regime. It would be foolish for us to take them at their word.
But we shouldn’t ignore them either.
“We are in an undeclared state of hostility toward this regime.”
Yes, we are…and the fact it continues to be “undeclared” is our eternal weakness when dealing with Iran.
Because they are in an Open State of War with with us, and chuckle at our timidity to call it such.
Hint, when roomfuls of their “elected leders” regularly chant “Death to America, Death to Israel” as a normal administrative function of their legislature, they are at war with you.
Our 35 year failure to properly and appropriately acknowedge that fact, is the reason for our persistant failure in getting anywhere with them, in terms of their nasty world-wide behavior.
We need to “unilaterally” issue ultimatums of behavioral standards for them, and strike them militarity when they fail to meet them.
Fat chance though…Politicians and Diplomats dont care about results, its the PROCESS that keeps them comfortably employed
Don’t worry “things” one day will fall!
Someone I know, who is Persian and a physician in training in the USA, recently returned from a trip to Iran because of urgent family business (a close family member was either gravely ill or had recently died).
On her way out at the airport the Iranian Guard grilled her on who she worked with in the USA, demanding that she name her colleagues and asking where she was going to go when she got back to the USA. Then they dumped out the contents of her bags (which were mostly just clothes) onto a pile on the floor.
Then, after she swore in Farsi, the guards put her in handcuffs for six hours and delayed her for three days, not only causing her to miss her return flight to the USA, but also her hospital service work.
Anyway, the Khomeinists do not screw around, and I get the distinct impression that if they don’t get what they want, they’ll just create new “hostages” of their own for exchange.
I had an Iranian friend back in the days just after the Shah was evicted. He said he didn’t dare go back to Iran because he’d be arrested the moment he got off the plane.
Your friend was lucky.
With the benefit of decades of “talks” and actions taken on both sides of the table IF I WERE elected King for the Day I would do the following.
1. Insist on “talks” with the Iranians.
2. 6 hours before the talks were to be held I would BOMB the following: Every oil terminal, every power plant, every Republican Guard build or OWNED asset, every Nuclear Site (including the plutonium ones that the press doesnt even mention)
3. Arrest every Iranian in America that worked for Iran, it’s trade mission, the UN delegation and/or suspected spy.
Once finished I would BEG for the Iranians to sit down for “talks”
Then I would continue to BOMB and destroy every Iranian asset in Iran, cut off all countries that do business in Iran with doing business with America (yeah I know the list is endless, including China, India, Germany, France, Pakistan etc.)
I would also tell the world in a public statement that Israel has the right if not DUTY to completely liquidate Hamas and Hezbollah (and the Lebanese government) at once.
OK, so I know I sound foolish.
But we have tried the other way for 40 years and what has that gotten us????
You forgot to mention a smart bomb aimed at at every one of the mullahs and basij in the Iranian nazi ruling clique. Of course, that might leave us no one to negotiate with. Not necessarily a bad thing….
Gork, you’ll never improve on the version of your platitude put out by Churchill: “To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war”, but unfortunately neither version is strictly true. To see why, consider talks that have been held with North Korea. It’s apparent that for them “jaw-jaw” is a strategic maneuver aimed at imposing harm on some of the other negotiators. There is a serious case to be made that continuing to negotiate with NK is a worse choice than not negotiating, although I am not making that case. It’s quite possible that we are in a similar position with respect to Iran. To know whether that is true one would have to have detailed knowledge of Iran’s intentions and capabilities and not just a generalization about the undesirability of war.
Frankly, I see NOTHING to suggest that these animals intend to do anything that could possibly be in our best interest, let alone the interest of innocent idiots stupid enough to be in Iran anytime since the fall of the Shah. Its not a secret that these barbarians will do anything they wan’t to further their cause. So far it’s been 30+ years of BS and coffee talk and even Mr Ledeen knows this conversation is going nowhere, but thanks for the update Mike.
i’m trying to clear away some debris. And as you know, I want revolution in Iran…
We talk way too much and act way to late and with much too little effort. This mess in the Middle East is an existential war between the West and Islam that has been going on for close to a thousand years. Let us end it for good so we may stop spending our kids lives and our treasure on it.
Let us consider a hypothesis that I call the “mildly radioactive glass parking lot solution”. For us: clean and clinical, for them: debate ending. For everyone else in the region: peace at the point of a neutron.
Too late for that I’m afraid…
Iran’s nuke capabilities are now a forgone conclusion…
Iran, Pakistan and “moderate” Indonesia.
Thats THREE mutually supportive Islamist Regimes, all with Nukes and the new-found will to export them to whatever terrorist group thats asks…
Oh, and Indonesia is the most populace country in the world?
In the Pacific rim where most of the worlds Manufactured goods gome from?
While Iran and the Paki’s could clobber the important Indian Economy we also depend on?
Sure, we’ll get concessions from THEM anytime soon, huh?
We talk-talked our way into “checkmate” a long tme ago.
The US have shown to the fanatical Iranians that they will give up on fundamental values out of fatigue resulting from an absolute lack of convictions and the believe that there is room for compromise!
The US has intervened inappropriately in the 50ties and thereafter. The Iranians have a legitimate case. At some point however, fanaticism and terrorism MUST be stopped. The elimination of Christians from the ME is consistent with fanaticism and terrorism and represent crimes against humanity as much as what happens in Darfur. But who cares. In the mean time Muslims are invading Europe and the Americas.
Exactly Steven,
“The US have shown to the fanatical Iranians that they will give up on fundamental values out of fatigue resulting from an absolute lack of convictions and the believe that there is room for compromise!”
That is what fanatics count on. Wearing us out. When will people figure out the reality of what terrorists say they are going to do in the presence of their people, they will do. And have been proving they will do what they say for centuries. How stupid can you be to listen to them lie to you in your face, when you know how they truly address their nation like “infiltrating the infidels from the inside out” and no one in the political la-la land realm takes them seriously.
The terrorists are not the ones wearing out the American people. It is the freaking politicians.
“no particular sign that any breakthrough is imminent.”
Of course not. The Iranians are not negotiating for an agreement, they are negotiating for time. Which they have recieved in abundance. No reason to change tactics.
“Talking never hurt” Bullshit. Not talking is a form of communication also.
And there are others, whose names have not appeared in any account I have read, who the Iranians believe to be CIA agents.
It so pains me to think of any Americans rotting away and out of reach in Evin prison. For that matter, I’ve also become mildly obsessed with Ron Arad.
Allow me to throw an unanswerable question at you Ledeen. I read, in one of many many articles on Arad, that he supposedly attempted escape at one point (according to another prisoner released from Evin) only to have the Iranians “perform surgery” on him to cripple him. That is, he is now, assuming still alive, in a wheelchair.
Can you proffer an opinion on that, or anything else that you’ve heard regarding this man. If there’s ever a man who only had G-d to turn to, he is/was it.
Since you probably don’t have any “details” to share, how about an opinion on this: why in G-d’s name wouldn’t the Iranians attempt to trade Arad for something of value? And, ok, let’s say Iran never held him — then why wouldn’t whomever had him attempt to do the same?
idon’t know anything. i thought poor Arad was dead many years ago.
All of this “talk” about “talks” and “seeking” this or that from these Iranians, or for that matter, any Muslim “entity” at all, is a futility on wheels in our busy-busy-busy “diplomatic” efforts. “Iranian Human Rights Council”…..who’re we kidding?, who’re they kidding?
“Diplomacy” as we are much too long and persistently wont to use it, is only today a circuitous waste of time. In this 21st Cent “diplomacy” is a quaint 18th Cent. approach to mindless current date Muslim barbarism. A danse macabre. A Totentanz.
What do murderers have to “talk” about exactly?….except to gain time…..to anyone at all? Why must we Americans think that we must “talk” to savages?
This is why I keep harping on the need for us Americans to apply soviet-style isolation and containment to these troublesome Iranians and any other “entity” based upon demonstrated Koranic-Muslim approaches to “life”…specifically to our “life”.
We must not expect any help or assistance from anyone. No one even remotely willing has the needed resources….the Brits?….the oh, my….gasp!…French?…..these Muslim entities are their colonial creations. Let them be held to account for a change. Does anyone have the attention span to recall that the British Foreign Secy Hague recently asked for more “American leadership in the Middle East”? What chutzpah!
Out real friends are of course the ever-blessed-and-constant Aussies and the Canadians. But they have only a fraction of our population and treasury capacity.
Why do we pursue this “talking-seeking-talking” nonsense? It’s costing only more of our young blood.
>>>>>error correction read…..”our” instead of “out”…real friends…..
As for the talks being secret and(implicitly)the significance of that,judging from the results of secret negotiations over legislation and administrative regulations and the like – among the branches of our own government, mind you! – it is highly likely that the results will be good for the two governments and bad to extremely bad for the peoples of the two nations.
Among the hostages, one might include a goodly number of the Iranian populace. Unfortunately, the POTUS and savants at the Dept of State don’t give a rat’s *** as evidenced by their silence during the Green Revolution. The now discredited NIE claiming Iran halted pursuit of the bomb was actually useful. It showed that Iran ignores a pliant US but shudders in fear of a muscular US as it did when it temporarily halted developed once – when the US invaded Iraq.
good questions. yes, the Iranian people are held hostage by the regime, and are not offered to us for rescue. And the silence in 2009-2010 may well demonstrate a reluctance to do anything that might screw up the “grand bargain.”
Yup…
Think “kurds, Iraq, circa 2000″ for what the average Iranian might have to fear in “working with us” to depose the regime
Unfortunately, true.
Also think pro-American Sunni and moderate Shia in Iraq circa 2010 and pro-American Afghans circa 2015.
Of course if we had the fortitude to dispose of the Mullah regime then those brave folks might become allies.
Allies?
One islamist fanatic for another?
Like the “brave folks” that toppled Kadaffi?
Sorry, but if you follow “the Prophet” in any way at all, all roads lead to the same place as far as peaceful co-existance with the west goes.
The only thing that (would have) worked (and its too late for this now anyway) is to “japan” them, sieze their governments, dictate new constitutions and control what books their children are allowed to read for 75 years.
Aint gonna happen now though.
I have nothing to add but thank you Michael for a carefully parsed post as usual.
Perhaps dealing with the enemies within before looking at the enemies without would be prudent.
youtube.com/watch?v=hXSKNzSdqLk
“Burns and Rice had gone to New York to greet Larijani and celebrate the historic moment. When the Iranians failed to appear, Rice flew back to Washington. Burns hung around for a couple of days, vainly hoping the Iranians would eventually show up.”
A great lesson from French history! “One of the major reasons of French conquest of Algeria in 1830 was the diplomatic incident on 29 April 1827 “the fly whisk incident or so-called fan affair”. At that time the ruler of the Ottoman regency of Algiers ‘the Dey Hussein’ had unsuccessfully negotiated with the French consul, Pierre Deval, in matter of paying off the Republic’s debt to Algeria. The French consul refused to provide satisfactory answers regarding debts, and then Hussein dey struck Deval with his fly whisk. The king of France, Charles X, used this slight — by Hussein — against his diplomatic representative as a pretext for the invasion of Algeria. At first, the king asked to an apology from the dey of Algiers, and then initiated his blockade against Algiers. France invaded and quickly seized Algiers in 1830, despite of internal political strife in France.
As for the world’s lone superpower; “September 11 attacks by the Saudis, the mullahs of Iran and their proxies of Syrians, Iraqis and Lebanese are massacring Americans over thirty years. Many cases of hostage-taking by them and by their tools of terrorist Muslims, and most recently, the incident of the U.S. ambassador slaughter in Libya. and more and more of humiliation… And after all, the Americans still practice a policy of humiliation and appeasement with those who murdering them every single day!”