Reply #11: Flynt Leverett Interview: Bush Administration ‘Not Serious’ About Dealing With Iran

[mod mom]

"neo-cons in the * Admin wanted regime change ¬hing else and didn’t want to talk to the Iranians? I think you’re right."



Leverett: Bush Administration ‘Not Serious’ About Dealing With Iran

Interviewer:
Bernard Gwertzman, Consulting Editor
Interviewee:
Flynt Leverett

March 31, 2006

-snip

I see. So this document pops up on Secretary of State Colin Powell’s desk. It was a very top-secret document, I suppose.

It wasn’t a classified document. What’s so remarkable about it, it was sent over by the Swiss embassy as an unclassified fax.

I see. That’s why you can talk about it so easily.

Yes, the document was never classified.

So the United States had to make a decision on what it wanted to do. Was there a big debate about this?

By this point I am out of government and I don’t really know how this played out within the bowels of the administration. What I do know happened is that the formal response of the administration to this was to complain to the Swiss foreign ministry that the Swiss ambassador in Tehran was exceeding his brief by talking with Iranians about a paper like this and passing it on.

Let’s then go to the essence. Is this one of these clichés that the neo-cons in the Bush administration wanted regime change and nothing else and didn’t want to talk to the Iranians?

I think you’re right. That’s the basic motivation, that you had a bunch of neo-cons, and even the president himself , it’s not just the neo-cons who wanted regime change and nothing else. Ultimately the president is, on this issue, very, very resistant to the idea of doing a deal, even a deal that would solve the nuclear problem. You don’t do a deal that would effectively legitimate this regime that he considers fundamentally illegitimate. I think that’s the real issue.

-snip
http://www.cfr.org/publication/10326/