Iran Cannot Be Trusted

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This is a great article printed at the American Enterprise Institute in which they detail why Iran cannot be trusted:

What enables diplomacy is trust that the opposing side will honor its commitments. Tehran's track record does not create confidence. In its formative revolutionary years, the reformist heyday, and even today, the Iranian leadership has had a consistent record of antipathy toward diplomatic convention and violation of agreements.

The Embassy Seizure

It has become fashionable to blame the United States for poor relations with Iran, but within months of the Islamic Revolution, Washington was willing to reestablish diplomatic relations. On November 1, 1979, Iranian foreign minister Ibrahim Yazdi met with Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter's national security advisor, in Algiers to discuss resumption of relations. Three days later, in reaction, Iranian students "following the link of the Imam [Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini]" attacked the U.S. embassy in Tehran, taking fifty-two diplomats hostage. The day after the hostage seizure, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini gave their actions a ringing endorsement. Even Warren Christopher, at the time deputy secretary of state and a dove on Iran, regarded such action as a "flagrant violation" of the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations.[2]

[…]Broken Promises

In the aftermath of the hostage situation, the Reagan administration took a pragmatic approach toward engaging Iran. While the Iran-Contra Affair is remembered today for the Reagan administration's illegal attempts to circumvent the Congressional prohibition of the funding of the Nicaraguan resistance, from a diplomatic perspective, the duplicity of Iranian politicians–many of whom still wield significant power in Tehran–is also important. A week after former U.S. national security advisor Robert McFarlane's secret 1986 trip to Tehran, Mehdi Hashemi, the son-in-law of Khomeini's deputy Hossein Ali Montazeri, leaked word of secret talks in pamphlets distributed at the University of Tehran. Six months later, Montazeri or his immediate aides–there were conflicting admissions–leaked word of McFarlane's meetings in the pro-Syrian Lebanese news magazine Ash Shira‘a.[6] On November 4, 1986, the seventh anniversary of the embassy seizure, former president and Expediency Council chairman Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani confirmed the meeting to the international press.[7] Regardless of questions over the wisdom of the arms-for-hostages negotiations, the episode represented a serious, sensitive, and covert attempt to reach out to the Iranian government. U.S. authorities trusted the Iranians to keep their silence. Regardless of the reason, Iranian officials–and ultimately Rafsanjani–broke their word.

[…]The Rushdie Rules

Yet another incident demonstrates just how poorly the Iranian government fares in keeping its promises. On February 14, 1989, Iranian Supreme Leader Khomeini issued a declaration calling for author Salman Rushdie's death.

On September 24, 1998, the Iranian government said it would do nothing to harm Rushdie, acceding to the British Foreign Office's chief condition for the restoration of diplomatic relations.[9] But on February 14, 1999, Iranian security officers reaffirmed their intention to carry out Rushdie's death sentence.

[…]The Business of Deception

Iranian diplomatic promises are especially unreliable when made in the course of deals that involve commercial enrichment or incentives. On November 8, 1996, Iranian deputy prime minister Mahmoud Vaezi promised to help locate Ron Arad, an Israeli airman lost over Lebanon a decade earlier and captured by a pro-Iranian militia. "It is not a political but a humanitarian question," an Iranian member of Vaezi's delegation explained.[12] But after the French and Iranian governments concluded a deal for Iran to purchase ten Airbus jumbo jets and $500 million in communications satellites, and agreed that the French company Total would develop Iran's oil fields, the Iranian foreign ministry reversed its position on Arad.

[…]Afghanistan and Iraq: Saying One Thing, Doing Another

Afghanistan is often lauded as a successful model for U.S.-Iranian cooperation. While United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan praised Iran's "great support"[17] to Afghanistan, and a former National Security Council staffer lauded Iranian cooperation with Washington over Afghanistan,[18] the reality was less rosy. Both former parliamentary speaker and leading cleric Ali-Akbar Nateq-Nuri and Hussein Ibrahimi, Khamenei's personal representative for Afghanistan, urged Afghan clerics to resist U.S. plans and goals for Afghanistan.[19] On March 8, 2002, Afghan commanders intercepted twelve Iranian agents and proxies who were organizing armed resistance among Afghan commanders.[20] Iranian assurances of noninterference were false.

Still, U.S. and British officials sought to obtain an agreement that Iran would not interfere prior to the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom. British foreign secretary Jack Straw elicited a promise from Iranian foreign minister Kamal Kharrazi, who pledged Iranian noninterference. Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran's ambassador to the United Nations, repeated this pledge to Zalmay Khalilzad, then President George W. Bush's envoy to the free Iraqis. But Iran's diplomacy was a diversion. Soon after Saddam's fall, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, with the acquiescence of the Islamic Republic's supreme leadership, moved to infiltrate into the country 2,000 fighters, militiamen, and Qods Force personnel replete with radio transmitters, money, pamphlets, and supplies.

Which brings us to a nuclear Iran.  

On May 29, 2005, Hojjat ol-Islam Gholam Reza Hasani, the Supreme Leader’s personal representative to the province of West Azerbaijan, declared possession of nuclear weapons to be one of Iran’s top goals. "An atom bomb . . . must be produced as well," he said."That is because the Qur’an has told Muslims to 'get strong and amass all the forces at your disposal to be strong.'"[33]

[…]In December 2002, satellite photos confirmed reports that the Iranian government was building an undeclared uranium enrichment plant at Natanz, about 130 miles south of Tehran, and a heavy water plant at Khondab, about thirty-two miles northwest of the town of Arak.[35]

In February 2003, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) sent a team of inspectors to confirm Iranian statements that "the activities of the Islamic Republic are totally transparent, clear, and peaceful."[36] Their subsequent report showed the depth of Iranian subterfuge. Iran had completed 164 centrifuges, was working on 1,000 more, and had designed the facility to house at least 50,000. Furthermore, the inspection revealed that Tehran had not acknowledged import of almost a ton of uranium from China, nor could the Iranian nuclear agency account for some missing processed uranium.[37]

The Iranian government’s initial claims that its program was indigenous and entirely peaceful were false. As the IAEA noted, "The role of uranium metal in Iran’s declared nuclear fuel cycle still needs to be fully understood, since neither its light water reactors nor its planned heavy water reactors require uranium metal for fuel."[38]

Iran cannot be trusted, plain and simple.  Not only are they untrustworthy but they are blackmailers:

IRAN warned major oil-consuming nations today that the imposition of UN sanctions over its refusal to halt uranium enrichment would lead to a rise in oil prices, Iranian news agencies reported.

"Sanctions on Iran and a sudden rise in global oil prices would hurt the economies of the large oil consuming nations," Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Reza Sheikh-Attar was quoted as saying.

"With the rise of every dollar in the oil price, the economy of the large oil-consuming nations will be affected," he added, without elaborating.

"We have devised different scenarios for the sanctions, and based on the opposite party's action we will implement our plans," he added.

But Kofi and the UN continues to regard Iran as they did Iraq for 12 years.  Trustworthy.  Just give them a bit more time and they will come around says Kofi and company.  

If you will recall during the Iraqi "diplomacy" Kofi and company made a TON of money with some scandalous programs.  Is the same thing happening again? 

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