Former US Senator: US-Iran Ties €

Former US Senator J. Bennett Johnston said on 25th of March that the normalization of relations between Iran and the United States is in the interest of both countries, and would act as a “magic elixir” for the region.

“But just think of what it would mean first to the United States if we had a friendly and normal relationship with Iran. It would be … the key to peace in the Middle East. Israel, who feels terribly threatened by Iran, would be free of that burden. Our relationship with Iraq would be so much better, Afghanistan, the whole region would be much more secure, much more peaceful that it is now. It would be the magic elixir for the Middle East.”

The former senator was speaking at a policy symposium with the theme of “The Obama Administration and US-Iran Relations” on Capitol Hill in Washington held as part of a Nowruz reception sponsored by the American-Iranian Council [AIC].

The Capitol Hill Nowruz reception came on the heels of US President Barack Obama’s 20 March unprecedented video message on the occasion of the Iranian New Year, addressed to the people and leaders of “the Islamic Republic”, in which he offered a “new beginning” in diplomatic engagement between the two countries.

However, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in a swift response to Obama’s message, said his government would judge the U.S. by actions and not words, but also said: “If you change, we will also change our behavior.”

“It seems to me that this administration under President Obama has done exactly the right thing, has made entreaties based upon respect.”

He added that the new US approach should not insist on demanding prior commitments from the Iranians.

Another speaker at this symposium, Dr. Fatemeh Haghighatjoo, former Majlis [parliament] deputy and member of Iran’s reform movement, said that a halt of uranium enrichment should not be a pre-condition for talks, and that a full cessation of enrichment should be still be the goal of the negotiations.

Haghighatjoo, who resigned from the Majlis in 2004 due to lack of progress in the reform movement, disagreed with popular assessments that negotiations between the US and Iran will be more difficult if current president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and his hard-line faction win June presidential elections. She argued that on the contrary, a win by the reformist camp may lead Iran’s hardliners to unite and scuttle any renewed Iran-US dialogue.

”The present [Iranian] administration has the ability to control hardliners, who oppose any talks with the US. The conservatives would gain credibility through this, which would lead other branches of government to support the idea of negotiation… If President Ahmadinejad would not be reelected and by chance, a reformist candidate such as former Prime Minister Mr. Mousavi or former Speaker of Parliament Mehdi Karoubi [are elected], the chances of starting comprehensive negotiations would be slim.”

However, Professor Hooshang Amirahmadi, President of the AIC, and an advocate of a renewed dialogue between the U.S. and Iran, disagreed with Haghighatjoo’s call for no preconditions to talks, and said he has changed his previous position recently and now believes that Iran should freeze uranium enrichment for a temporary period in order to jumpstart the negotiations.

Roger Cohen, syndicated New York Times columnist who recently returned from a three-week visit to Iran, added during this symposium that a temporary freeze on uranium enrichment as a pre-condition is irrelevant because Iran can always restart its enrichment program, and the goal should rather be to ensure uranium is not enriched to weapons-grade levels.

”I do think it’s meaningless, a meaningless kind of obstacle, because you can suspend enrichment and you can start it again two months later. And the more important thing is to try to bind Iran into a framework where we assure that the enriched fuel, low enriched fuel at this point, is not being devoted [to weapons-grade uranium].”