Last week, President Trump offered talks with Iran “without preconditions.” This was a surprising move. Less surprising was Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, just hours later, imposing multiple preconditions on any talks.
Was this by design though? Maybe not. Analysts are now speculating that President Trump and his advisors are at odds on the question of talking with Iran, with Trump actually willing to talk without preconditions, and Pompeo quickly putting the kibosh on that.
John Bolton, as opposed to diplomacy as one can get, suggested Trump is still willing to talk without preconditions, but also said he believed the whole point of offering talks was for Iran to reject them, and prove that “they’re not serious.”
Yet Iran’s position on talks isn’t so straightforward either. President Hassan Rouhani likewise suggested on Tuesday that he was open to talks “without precondition,” though this was hastily amended to say that Iran cannot negotiate while under the shadow of economic sanctions.
Bolton appeared taken aback by this suggestion, saying that he thought any offers of talks by Rouhani must be “propaganda,” since he’d just gotten done making clear that in his opinion the US offers of talks were the same thing.
But while insincere offers of talks are nothing new, it’s not entirely clear that either Trump or Rouhani is necessarily averse to the idea of negotiating directly, without preconditions. Yet both face substantial political resistance in doing so, meaning in all likelihood, no such talks are imminent.
Every time the Palestinians talk with the Israeli they lose more land so Iran would be wasting time talking with the duplicitous US. Let them honour all previous agreements before any more talks.
I did not know there ever was any Palestine land or even Palestine for that matter never was a country
Really??? Palestine WAS a country after the fall of the Roman
Empire before it was swallowed up by the Ottoman Empire a few centuries later.
Israel, on the other hand, was never really a country; in ancient times when David was king, there were two separate entities, Judah and Galilee, and David ruled Judah. It wasn’t until the Romans conquered the two territories that they were merged into one and renamed Palestine, in memory of the long forgotten Philistines. After Rome’s fall, Palestine survived for a few centuries until it was swallowed up by the Ottoman Empire; and when that Empire was defeated and broken up, a British Mandate of Palestine was established.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syria_Palaestina
A British Mandate of Palestine was established after WW1. Why do you think that Mandate was named Palestine?
While it was not a sovereign state the treaty which made the British mandators ordered the British to keep the country together and prepare it to become a sovereign state in which both Arabs and Jews (the Balfour Declaration!) would live.
That league of Nations treaty was violated by the United Nations which divided the mandate into a crazy-quilt unsustainable pattern of Jewish and Arabic enclaves.
It does no’t matter whether there was ever a state named Palestine. According to the 1947 UN resolution the Arabs who lived in the Mandate have the right to have a state of their own. They still have that right and can name that state (it is NOT Gaza) whatever they want to name it. You have no standing here.
The current status has nothing to do with the 1947 agreement. It has come about owing to warfare triggered by both sides, not by law or diplomacy.
But guess who DID know about Palestine? Golda Meier! She wrote “Palestine” on her passport before Israel was established. Guess she was a dirty anti Semite.
That Palestine was owned by the British and included Jordan and more.
Please inform us when there was an independent nation called Palestine.
I favor a Palestinian state. But they dont have anymore right to an indepenfant nation than does Isreal.
You know eho deserves a state the Kurds.
There are 22 arab nations but no Kurdish nation.
The Palestinians are the same people as the Jordanians the Lebanese and the Syrians. There is no difference in their culture or their language. The borders of all those nations were drawn up by western nations.
there was never an independent nation called Israel till 1948 and even then, it has NEVER decared its borders
Telling that you lump all Arabs together. Palestine is a distinct land with a people distinct from Jordan and other Arab nations. The Palestinians are a mix of non Arab and Arab. You are so incorrect to say there is no difference in the culture between Palestinians and other “Arab” nations, regardless of whether many of the borders were drawn by the West.
You show that the Palestinians are differnt than the Lebanese the Syrans or the Jordanians. You are making stuff up
The was Egypt and non arab iran . and Turkey all the other nations in the mideast had their borders drawn by Western powers.
Stop making stuff up. The Kurds deserve a state more than the Palestinians
Here dummy
https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Zuheir_Mohsen
What is it with this anti Gentilist notion that a people whose land was never officially an independent nation have no right to their own nation? After all, at one point in ancient history, there had not been a nation called Israel. Yet for some reason, stupid Hasbarists think they have a clever argument.
What is it with this anti Gentilist notion that a people whose land was never officially an independent nation have no right to their own nation? After all, at one point in ancient history, there had not been a nation called Israel. Yet for some reason, stupid Hasbarists think they have a clever argument.
He who doesn’t go to war roars like a lion. ~ Iranian Proverb
Trump is bluffing about attacking Iran; pay him no attention on that count.
Rouhani’s first mistake was even entering into negotiations with a group that included the US. He would be even dumber if he were to renegotiate the nuke treaty with the US.
The US can’t get over the fact that some Iranians took over our embassy, but don’t seem to remember that we overthrew their elected government and then helped the shah set up the dreaded savak. Nor do we give a crap that we shot down a civilian Iranian airliner, killing almost 300 people–and initially lied about it.
Plus Bush also refused to apologize for us shooting that airliner down. The man responsible for giving the order to fire, Captain Will Rogers, received the Legion of Merit award for his service from ’87 to ’89. Apparently, shooting down a civilian airliner isn’t a disqualifier for that award. The anti-air warfare officer also received a medal although the radar clearly showed the plane to be ascending instead of descending.
World aviation safety is impacted not just Iran’s by sanctions on aircraft maintenance. Every country should be up in arms objecting to any sanctions on aviation.
I wholeheartedly agree, Peter Mo, world aviation safety’s impacted, not just Iran’s, by sanctions on aircraft maintenance; these sanctions are another way of murdering passengers and crew. As you rightly said, every country should be up in arms loudly objecting to any sanctions on aviation maintenance. The USG”s advocating murder with them.
The US can’t prove it’s serious, even if just to try to prove that Iran isn’t serious? Usually, preconditions are just excuses not to talk. But Iran’s one precondition is necessary and reasonable. They talked before and supposedly got sanctions relief. The vast majority of the signatories of that agreement are still fully on-board. All they could get from talking now other than proving they are serious is to be talked out of getting what they were already promised, or talked into giving up even more and still getting nothing for it. It takes two willing parties to have diplomacy.
Iran knows they can wait this out. American administrations come and go. They have the EU, Russia and China on their side. If the Democrats make gains in the elections this year, Trump is under political stress at home.
They did it before. They could again.
They shouldn’t have to, because a deal was made and is now broken by only one party, by Trump. Perhaps another deal can’t be trusted any more than the last.
However, there is another possibility Iran should see, shown by North Korea. It may be that Trump is fine with the deal, he just wants to make it a Trump deal, put his name on it, claim a grand success.
Since he may be nuts, it may be that the safest thing for Iran would be to manage his lunacy to do least harm to Iran until someone comes with a butterfly net to collect Trump and take him away.