Amir Taheri gives a gloomy view of all the talks going on with and about Iran, all the chit-chatting while the threat grows:

JUDGING by reports from half a dozen capitals, lots of people seem to be negotiating with lots of others about future talks between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Five Plus One Group - the five permanent U.N. Security Council members plus Germany. Talking about talks is an old tactic, used whenever adversaries run out of ideas about their next move. The assumption is that, so long as the two sides are talking about talks, neither will do anything to jeopardize the possibility of holding “real talks” later on.

Sometimes one side or the other uses the tactic to buy time. In 1934, for example, the new Nazi regime in Germany initiated talks about talks with Britain and France. By 1938, those talks about talks had paved the way for real talks between Chancellor Adolf Hitler and British and French Prime Ministers Neville Chamberlain and Edouard Daladier. Both sides had bought time - but each used it differently. Hitler used his time to rebuild Germany’s war machine; Britain and France used theirs to deepen their illusions about an ever-elusive peace. Talking about talks can also be used as substitute for policy…

Eventually, other world and local powers will have to stop dancing around the Iranian issue. Sooner or later, they must shape real policies for dealing with a regime that, if not included in the global system, could develop into the most dangerous source of instability, even war, in one of the world’s most sensitive regions.

In the Guardian, via Common Dreams, we see that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is not letting the grass grow under his feet while the West dithers:

[A]s Tehran’s uranium enrichment dispute with the US, Britain and other western European countries has moved towards a denouement, Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has launched an energetic diplomatic counter-offensive. Defying US containment efforts, Iran is pursuing its own policy of regional engagement. And to Washington’s growing unease, it seems to be working.

“The Americans are making a big push to isolate Iran. But they are making a big mistake. We are not Burma,” said Vahid Karimi of the government-funded Institute for Political and International Studies. “We have plenty of friends.” Mr Ahmadinejad’s latest success came at last weekend’s meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, a pan-Asian economic and security grouping dominated by China and Russia….

Iran’s diplomatic fightback is taking place on other fronts across the Arab and Islamic spheres. “Iran is coming into its own,” said Seyed Muhammad Adeli, Iran’s former ambassador to Britain and the head of Econotrend, a respected independent thinktank in Tehran. “Iran’s regional profile has never been higher in modern times. Our neighbours are ever more convinced that Iran is being unfairly treated by the Americans.”

To drive home the point, Tehran is actively building closer links with Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and other central Asian countries. Mr Ahmadinejad is planning a Tehran summit of Caspian Sea littoral states to discuss how to stop “foreign intervention” in the area. Iran also recently wooed a Washington favourite, the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, in Tehran, and is busily mending fences with Pakistan.

It has won the support of the Non-Aligned Movement and the Arab League for its nuclear stance. Its envoys have recently visited Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia and some north African states. It has reportedly become the biggest single state contributor of funds to Palestine in the wake of the west’s ostracism of the Hamas government.

And in a groundbreaking move earlier this month, Ali Larijani, Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator and the second most influential government figure after Mr Ahmadinejad, met Egypt’s president, Hosni Mubarak…”Shanghai was a big success,” Dr Karimi said. “All our neighbours support our [nuclear] policy, even Mubarak….”

What, we wonder, will be the size of the Axis that the clever lunatic Ahmadinejad ultimately assembles? We have previously noted his ties to Castro, Evo Morales and Hugo Chavez, and the support for Islamists in oil rich Nigeria — a clear step towards a catastrophic use of the oil weapon. So the threat only grows. It is in this context that we wonder (maybe it is really a wish) if the Rice-Bush initiative towards negotiaions with Iran is really part of a strategy to give greater legitimacy to the US’s ultimately using military force to take out Iran’s nuclear capability.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 20th, 2006 at 5:08 pm and is filed under China, EU, General, Iran, Religion, War, business, radical chic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.