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While Washington debates whether it should talk to Iran, one Maryland congressman has already struck up a conversation, according to the U.S. newspaper, Baltimore Sun.

For the past year, Rep. Wayne T. Gilchrest has been meeting with Iranian officials and business leaders to talk about ways to improve relations between the United States and the Islamic republic that President Bush put in his Axis of Evil.

With the recent release of a U.S. intelligence report concluding that Iran suspended its nuclear weapons program four years ago, he now sees an opportunity.

“You get this kind of momentum, we will begin a dialogue with Iran,” the Eastern Shore Republican said. “If it’s not in this administration - although I think it’s possible - you will see a change in policy so that the next administration will have a better opportunity to openly discuss issues with the Iranians.”

That’s been Gilchrest’s goal since a private meeting last autumn with Iran’s envoy to the United Nations. The three-hour session with Ambassador Mohammad Javad Zarif was the start of a continuing effort by Gilchrest, a former Marine who had come to regret his 2002 vote to authorize the use of military force in Iraq, to develop relations with the country that some believed the White House planned to attack next.

He has followed up with other Iranians, exchanged letters with the speaker of the Iranian parliament and organized a group of Republicans and Democrats focused on improving relations.

Called the Dialogue Caucus, the group is looking to spark broader communication between U.S. and Iranian lawmakers. To the 61-year-old Gilchrest, wounded as a platoon leader in Vietnam, it’s a matter of “sending old men to talk before we send young men to die.”

“What I’ve seen in Congress,” he said, “is when you have two people talking, exchanging information, the potential for solutions is infinite. When they don’t talk, there’s no potential at all.”

Still, he says, he has no illusions about the difficulty of finding common ground.

“These guys are not sprouting halos,” he said. “We’re not talking about a poor, misunderstood country. But, you know, this is politics. I’d rather have them talking than shooting at us.”

Gilchrest says Iran has legitimate interests in the security of neighboring Iraq, where it has strong ties to the Shiite majority. He says that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad does not speak for the whole country, any more than Bush speaks for all Americans.

The largely behind-the-scenes effort is not without political risk. Bush says the recent release of the National Intelligence Estimate will not change the administration policy of mostly shunning Iran, which the United States accuses of arming Shiite insurgents in Iraq.

The moderate Gilchrest, who has split with his party over Iraq, is facing a strong primary challenge from the right from state Sen. Andrew P. Harris in the conservative 1st Congressional District, which voted twice for Bush. State Sen. E.J. Pipkin and three other Republicans are also vying for the nomination.

“He joined [Democratic House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi in wanting to try to run the war, and now I guess it seems that he wants to make an end run around the State Department in handling these foreign affairs as well,” Harris said. “Freelancing on the part of Foreign Service wannabes … is probably not the best thing for this country.”

Efforts by lawmakers to reach out to nations with whom the United States has troubled relations have a long and not very productive history.

But former Democratic Rep. Lee H. Hamilton, whose Iraq Study Group urged the administration to open talks with Iran, says that outreach of the sort that Gilchrest is attempting is “exactly what is needed.”

Gilchrest says he has told Bush of the effort and has kept the administration apprised of his contacts. A State Department spokeswoman said members of Congress are free to speak with whomever they choose - but added that “we would hope that if they did engage in discussions with members of the Iranian government, they would reiterate our policy and explain to them the clearly outlined steps that they need to take in order to come to the negotiating table with the United States.”

The United States and Iran recently agreed to a fourth round of talks between their ambassadors in Baghdad to discuss security in Iraq. But U.S. officials say they will not hold higher-level meetings or broaden the discussion to other topics unless Iran stops processing the uranium that they say still could be used for nuclear weapons.

The focus on foreign affairs is something of a departure for Gilchrest. The former high school social studies teacher has been better known for his interest in the environment as a member of the House Natural Resources and Transportation committees.

Then came the Iraq war, on which he says he was “sold a bill of goods,” and what he sees as an increasingly and unnecessarily confrontational approach to the world by both the White House and Congress. He has visited Iraq three times since the 2003 invasion, and has also traveled to Syria, Israel, Jordan and other countries in the region.

“I just couldn’t sit on the side any longer and watch all this stuff unfold,” he said. “I hear my colleagues. I see resolution after resolution coming to the floor condemning this one and condemning that one. Isolating the Palestinians, not talking to the Iranians, calling people evil empires. They’re trying to put out fires by throwing on more dry logs.”

The U.S. ambassador to Iraq praised Iran on Sunday for helping to curb Shi’ite militia violence in Iraq on Sunday, using some of the warmest language Washington has employed toward its arch foe over Iraq.

Ambassador Ryan Crocker said Washington believed Iran may be behind a ceasefire announced by Iraqi Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and that it had helped to ensure the ceasefire stuck in areas where it wielded influence. But he also indicated that U.S. authorities still see Iran’s role as unpredictable and its motives opaque.

“I’m very cautious about predicting or analyzing what the Iranians are doing, because we’re not there,” Crocker told journalists in Baghdad. “But we have seen a reduction in violent action on the part of extremist militias — not an elimination, but a reduction. “We have seen Moqtada al-Sadr’s call for a freeze, and then his call for a renewal of that freeze. The Iranians have indicated — not to us but to others — that they have had a role in all of this. If that’s the case, then it’s good.

SPECIAL GROUPS

Asked who had provided the information that Iran was behind Sadr’s freeze, he said it had come from Iraqi authorities. The United States has blamed Iran for providing training and weapons — especially missiles and sophisticated roadside bombs known as explosively formed penetrators (EFPs) — to Iraqi Shi’ite militia.

It uses the term “special groups” to refer to militia units it says use such Iranian weapons. Crocker said such attacks had become less frequent, although he said an EFP was used earlier this month to kill the police chief of Babil province, a mainly Shi’ite area south of Baghdad where security forces have clashed with Sadr’s militia. “If Sadr has started the policy and the Iranians have used their influence to make it stick in areas where there are ’special groups’ and they’ve got far more influence then he does — then that’s a positive development,” he said.

Earlier this year, the United States and Iran set up a committee to discuss security in Iraq, a development seen as a diplomatic breakthrough for two countries that have had only limited contacts for 30 years. The committee last met in August at a time when Washington was loudly accusing Iran of fomenting violence and helping Shi’ite militia kill U.S.
troops.

But Sadr declared a six-month ceasefire by his Mehdi Army militia later that month, and U.S. forces say Shi’ite militia attacks quickly declined. Sadr’s spokesman said last week that he was considering extending the ceasefire when it expired in February. The next meeting of the Iran-U.S. security committee was due to take place on December 18 but was postponed because of a visit by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Crocker said U.S. and Iranian officials were still negotiating a new date, but he expected the meeting to take place within the next few weeks.

Source: Reuters

The former commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards has attacked President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over high inflation, the latest conservative to criticise his economic policies, media reported on Sunday. 

The complaints by Mohsen Rezaie were echoed by the conservative deputy speaker of parliament and a top lawmaker amid an intensifying public debate in Iran over the wisdom of the government’s economic policies. Rezaie said the government’s policy of injecting huge amounts of liquidity to fund local infrastructure projects was the main cause of price rises. Inflation reached 19.1 percent year-on-year in November. “Every year, the government injects a huge amount of money into society without supplying goods and services in return for this money,” Rezaie, who led the Guards from 1981-1997, was quoted as saying by the Sarmayeh newspaper. “Financial discipline in the state bureaucracy is also weak.

Therefore the source of inflation is the government itself. “The government should rectify its economic behaviour. That is the most important plan to control inflation.” Rezaie, who commanded the Guards for almost all of the 1980-1988 war with Iraq, now serves as secretary of Iran’s top political arbitration body the Expediency Council which also advises supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He rarely makes comments on day-to-day policy, although his status as the longest serving commander in the history of the Revolutionary Guards gives him considerable influence. Reformists and conservatives alike have intensified their criticism of Ahmadinejad after the president in a December 14 televised interview blamed his political opponents and external factors for high prices. Rezaie described Ahamadinejad’s explanation as “correct to a great extent but not transparent.”
 
Deputy parliament speaker Mohammad Reza Bahonar, another leading conservative, also hit out at the president who in the past had quipped that his cabinet members had to match his speed of 160 kilometres per hour. “Someone who drives at such a speed should be more careful about his performance,” Bahonar was quoted as saying by Sarmayeh. “If he does not foresee the obstacles in the way, the accidents will be even more terrible.” Bahonar also warned that Iran would face “tough times” if drastic measures were not taken to combat inflation in the next few months, according to the state television website.

Former Iranian presidents Mohammad Khatami and Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Tehran mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf and ex-nuclear negotiator Hassan Rowhani have all publicly criticised Ahmadinejad over the economy. The criticism of Khatami, Rafsanjani and Rowhani is no surprise at a time when their allies have formed a moderate front to challenge Ahmadinejad on March 14 parliamentary elections.

But the attacks by Bahonar, Qalibaf, Rezaie show that frustration is building in conservative ranks. Qalibaf and Rezaie allies have not joined the main pro-Ahmadinejad conservative election front. Prominent conservative MP Mohammad Khoshchehreh complained over the “tripling of the government’s share in budget law of the year 1385 (2006-2007) to 40 billion dollars from the 14.2 billion dollars of the last government.” “It’s like the case of an aneamic patient whose doctor prescribes only one package of blood,” Khoshchehreh was quoted as saying by the ISNA news agency. “The patient asks for three packages because they have heard that blood is a good thing. But the three packages are fatal indeed.”

Source: AFP