THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume IX, Issue # 202, October 27, 2007
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
DEBATE OVER THE GULDIMANN MEMORANDUM
By Dr. Michael Rubin & Barbara Slavin
THE CAUSE OF THE CURRENT BEHAVIOR OF THE IRANIAN POLITICAL REGIME: WHO IS AT FAULT, THE IRANIAN
AYATOLLAHS OR THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION? MICHAEL RUBIN & BARBARA SLAVIN DEBATE THE ISSUE
FULL STORY:
(As diplomatic tensions build between Washington and Tehran, a myth has developed that the Bush administration spurned
a 2003 Iranian offer to abandon terrorism and its nuclear program in exchange for U.S. recognition. By extension, therefore,
fault for Iranian behavior now lies not with the mullahs, but, rather, in the White House.
In a recent article, “The Guldimann Memorandum,” Weekly Standard, October 22, 2007, Dr. Michael Rubin, who was an
Iran policy director at the Pentagon in 2003, exposed the incident as a myth, one sold by a free-lancing Swiss diplomat to
credulous reporters. USA Today correspondent Barbara Slavin takes issue with this; she and Rubin debate the issue in
the November 5, 2007, issue of the Weekly Standard. -- The MEF Staff.)
GULDIMANN MEMO REDUX
There are a number of inaccuracies in Michael Rubin’s article (“The Guldimann Memorandum,” October 22, 2007). The 2003
memorandum was written by Sadegh Kharrazi, Iran’s Ambassador to France at the time, with Tim Guldimann, the Swiss
Ambassador to Iran, and edited by Javad Zarif, then a deputy foreign minister and one of Iran’s premier experts on the United
States. Far from being merely “circulated,” as Rubin writes, the agenda was approved by Iran’s senior leadership, including
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — a relative by marriage of Kharrazi.
The agenda was not shot down by Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, but by Bush administration indifference. In my book, I
quote a senior U.S. diplomat then dealing with the Iran issue as saying that the overture was never seriously considered by the
administration, then in a triumphalist mood over Iraq. The reference to Wolfowitz and Feith comes in a quote from Richard
Armitage, then Deputy Secretary of State. Armitage said Wolfowitz and Feith blocked a swap of leaders of the Mujahedin
e-Khalq, the Iranian terrorist group harbored by Saddam Hussein, for al-Qa'ida detainees in Iran. -- Barbara Slavin, Washington,
D.C.
MICHAEL RUBIN RESPONDS
Barbara Slavin is wrong. In a May 4, 2003, cover letter, Tim Guldimann writes that he developed the proposal in conversation
with Sadegh Kharrazi. Other reporters recognized the red herrings involved in the Guldimann offer:
Most diplomatic correspondence is signed; Guldimann’s memo was not.
Real diplomatic correspondence is on official letterhead; the Iranian offer
was not.
Governments do not send proposals with which they disagree; at his 2003
meetings, Guldimann said the proposal had the “80 percent” acceptance
of the Iranian government. He did not know with which portions they
disagreed.
Nor can Slavin explain why Guldimann would pass an Iranian offer to undersecretary-level American officials when British
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw was an established go-between with the Iranian Foreign Minister on sensitive American issues.
There was already direct dialogue between the United States and Iran above Guldimann’s and Sadegh Kharrazi’s level;
indeed, American and Iranian officials had met in Geneva the day before Guldimann unveiled his proposal.
Slavin has been misled by her sources. Former Iranian UN Ambassador Mohammad Javad Zarif represents the Islamic
Republic’s interests. He lied when, a month prior to the Iraq war, he promised that the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps
would remain outside Iraq. And, when he sees the opportunity to use credulous journalists to pour fuel on the political fires,
he does not hesitate.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
The Middle East & the Problem of Iran
American Foreign Policy -- The Middle East
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
International Politics & World Disorder:
War & Peace in the Real World
Page Two
Page One
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
U.S. National Security Strategy
Dr. Michael Rubin, a Ph.D. in History (Yale University) and a specialist in Middle Eastern politics, Islamic culture and Islamist
ideology, is Editor of the Middle East Quarterly and a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public
Policy Research. Dr Rubin is author of Into the Shadows: Radical Vigilantes in Khatami's Iran (Washington Institute
for Near East Policy, 2001) and is co-author, with Dr. Patrick Clawson, of Eternal Iran: Continuity and Chaos (Palgrave
Macmillan, 2005). Dr. Rubin served as political advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad (2003-2004); staff
advisor on Iran and Iraq in the Office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense (2002-2004); visiting lecturer in the Departments of
History and International Relations at Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2001-2002); visiting lecturer at the Universities of
Sulaymani, Salahuddin, and Duhok in Iraqi Kurdistan (2000-2001); Soref Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East
Policy (1999-2000); and visiting lecturer in the Department of History at Yale University (1999-2000). He has been a fellow at
the Council on Foreign Relations, the Leonard Davis Institute at Hebrew University, and the Carnegie Council on Ethics and
International Affairs.
Barbara Slavin has been the senior foreign affairs reporter and analyst for USA Today since 1996. Ms. Slavin's
35-year career as a journalist began in 1772, after graduating from Harvard University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in
Russian Language and Literature. She has worked for The Economist, The Los Angeles Times, Newsday,
Business Week, the United Press International, and the New York Times Week in Review. Slavin is a
member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
The foregoing debate between Michael Rubin and Barbara Slavin is to be published in the Weekly Standard,
November 5, 2007, and can be found on the Internet website
maintained by the Middle East Forum, a think tank which seeks to define and
promote American interests in the Middle East, defining U.S. interests to include fighting radical Islam, working for
Palestinian Arab acceptance of the State of Israel, improving the management of U.S. efforts to promote constitutional
democracy in the Middle East, reducing America's energy dependence on the Middle East, more robustly asserting U.S.
interests vis-à-vis Saudi Arabia, and countering the Iranian threat.
Republished with Permission of the Middle East Forum
Reprinted from the Middle East Forum News
mefnews@meforum.org (MEF NEWS)
October 27, 2007
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