Word: ahmadinejad
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...TIME's sources offered a glimpse into the internal Iranian debate on the issue, which involves Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Supreme National Security Council headed by Ali Larijani, as well as other senior Iranian officials. While radical elements inside the regime remain adamantly opposed to dealing with the "Great Satan," the sources said, a strong consensus has nonetheless developed among Iran's ruling conservatives in favor of talks with the U.S. The basis of this consensus is a belief that improved relations with the U.S. would serve Iranian interests on a variety of fronts, including...
...dialogue of civilizations." Bush not only refused to extend the olive branch cautiously offered by the Clinton Administration, he declared Iran part of an "axis of evil." Khatami left office under fire for the failure of his conciliatory approach, to be replaced by hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who proceeded to promote Iran's nuclear ambitions and call for Israel to be wiped off the map. Despite Bush's tough talk against Iran, the Iraq war has dramatically expanded Iran's influence in the country. To make matters worse, Iran's Lebanese ally, Hizballah, withstood Israel's month-long onslaught...
Direct talks with Iran will not persuade it to abandon its nuclear dreams right away. Even the slightly saner predecessors of President Ahmadinejad surreptitiously proceeded down the nuclear path despite pledges to do otherwise. Given Persia's precarious location and imperial impulses, I dare say that even our late unlamented friend the Shah was and would be doing the same...
President Ahmadinejad has the advantage of looking like a poet, sounding like a lunatic and not caring whether the West likes him. But Iran has multiple power centers. There's an election next month, for example, in which a reformist former President is challenging a fundamentalist cleric to join the Assembly of Experts that oversees Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei. About 70% of the population is under 30, and there are at least 70,000 active blogs expressing all sorts of aspirations of a diverse people, including ones by the President (ahmadinejad.ir) and Supreme Leader (khamenei.ir...
That is why, in addition to government talks, it's useful to have informal contacts with the Iranian people. I was with President Bush in New Orleans a month ago, and he got to talking about the ravings of Ahmadinejad, but he knows not to personify relations the way he once did with Russia's Vladimir Putin. That is why he has called for, and Congress has funded, citizen exchanges with Iran. A delegation of health experts from Iran, whose AIDS program is one of the best in the region, will soon visit the U.S. under the auspices...