Iran president rattles cage of U.S. foreign policy establishment

Fri Sep 29 17:57:33 EDT 2006

  <http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/21/world/middleeast/21iran.html?hp&ex=1158897600&en=fd75007868ac87af&ei=5094&partner=homepage>http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/21/world/middleeast/21iran.html?hp&ex=1158897600&en=fd75007868ac87af&ei=5094&partner=homepage

  Iran's Leader Relishes 2nd Chance to Make Waves 

  By DAVID E. SANGER  The New York Times  Thursday, 21 September 2006

  NEW YORK - When President Bush and his advisers decided to allow 
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran into the country to address the 
United Nations, their strategy was simple: containment.

  There would be no visits to other cities where he could denounce 
Washington or question Israel's legitimacy. There would be no 
opportunities, beyond his speech to the General Assembly, to turn 
questions about his nuclear intentions into repeated diatribes about 
America's nuclear arsenal.

  It turned out that Mr. Ahmadinejad had a Plan B.

  The scope of his determination to dominate not only the airwaves but 
the debate became evident yesterday evening, when he entered a hotel 
conference room on the East Side with a jaunty smile, a wave and an 
air of supreme confidence.

  Over the objections of the administration and Jewish groups that 
boycotted the event, Mr. Ahmadinejad, the man who has become the 
defiant face of Iran, squared off with the nation's foreign policy 
establishment, parrying questions for an hour and three-quarters with 
two dozen members of the Council on Foreign Relations, then ending 
the evening by asking whether they were simply shills for the Bush 
administration.

  Never raising his voice and thanking each questioner with a tone 
that oozed polite hostility, he spent 40 minutes questioning the 
evidence that the Holocaust ever happened - "I think we should allow 
more impartial studies to be done on this," he said after hearing an 
account of an 81-year-old member, the insurance mogul Maurice R. 
Greenberg, who saw the Dachau concentration camp as Germany fell - 
and he refused to even consider Washington's proposal for Russia to 
provide Iran with nuclear reactor fuel, and take it back once it is 
used. (Without the capacity to enrich fuel on its own soil Iran would 
be unable to make fuel suitable for a nuclear weapon.)

   Jewish leaders object to Iranian's appearance

  He traced the history of 50 years of unfilled deals with the United 
States, Germany, France and others - skipping over the Iranian 
revolution and the hostage-taking that followed - and concluded, "How 
can we rely on these partners." His solution? The United States 
should shut down its own fuel production and "within five years, we 
will sell you our own fuel, with a 50 percent discount!" He settled 
back into his seat with a broad smile that some in the group 
described as a smirk.

  The decision by the council's president, Richard N. Haass, to invite 
Mr. Ahmadinejad to the session touched off a rare outcry protest in 
an organization whose meetings are usually as staid as the portraits 
of long-forgotten diplomats on its walls.

  Mr. Haass, who ran the policy planning branch of the State 
Department during Mr. Bush's first term, first had to fend off senior 
administration officials who had argued that he should not give Mr. 
Ahmadinejad the legitimacy of a hearing - especially with the likes 
of Brent Scowcroft, who served as national security adviser under 
President Bush's father, or Robert D. Blackwill, who directed Iraq 
policy at the White House under Condoleezza Rice. 

  "It's fair to say that Dr. Rice thought this was a bad idea," one 
senior State Department official said. "A really, really bad idea."

  So did leaders of several Jewish groups, whom Mr. Haass invited - 
and who promptly asked if the council would have invited Hitler in 
the 1930's. "Some of us considered quitting to make it clear how 
offensive this is," said Abraham H. Foxman, the national director of 
the Anti-Defamation League, who was one of the Jewish leaders whose 
attendance Mr. Haass sought. 

  Members reconsider mass resignation

  But after a flurry of phone calls, including with Elie Wiesel, the 
writer and Holocaust survivor, they decided against a mass 
resignation - particularly after the council made the session a 
"meeting" rather than a dinner. (There were light hors d'oeuvres on 
the side; Mr. Ahmadinejad never touched them.)

  "It is more offensive to break bread with the guy," Mr. Foxman said. 
"I thought dinner was crossing the line." But the council pointed out 
that it had served as host for many world leaders equally skilled at 
repressing dissidents, developing suspected weapons programs, 
shutting down a free press and denouncing Israel.

  "We've had Castro," said Lisa Shields, the council's communications 
director, ticking off the gallery of leaders Washington considered 
rogues. "We've had Arafat, and Mugabe. We've had Gerry Adams." 

  The greeting yesterday evening was not exactly overwhelming. There 
were no introductory handshakes, no diplomatic niceties. All of the 
Americans who were invited to attend, including four journalists, 
were members of the council. Iran's effort to bring in television 
cameras was deflected, apparently because the council feared that the 
session would be used for political purposes in Iran, where Mr. 
Ahmadinejad is presumably eager to show that even if President Bush 
refused to meet him, he got his message across.

  In fact he did - meeting academics in the morning and religious 
leaders at midday, and speeding from the council meeting for another 
television interview. He did most of this without leaving the 
Intercontinental Hotel on 48th Street in Manhattan. 

  'Why such prominence to a small portion of those 60 million?'

  The council would not say how many of the invitees had refused to 
attend. But members said they knew of more than a half-dozen, from 
the publisher Mort Zuckerman to the former Secretary of State 
Madeleine K. Albright.  It is unclear why some declined. A few 
claimed scheduling conflicts, rather than moral objections.

  The handful who had a chance to quiz the Iranian president went out 
of their way, within the limits of diplomatic etiquette, to make 
clear to Mr. Ahmadinejad that they thought his characterizations of 
Israel and the Holocaust were repugnant and that his nuclear strategy 
was self-defeating.

  He gave no ground.

  When Martin S. Indyk, a former American ambassador to Israel, told 
Mr. Ahmadinejad that Iran "did everything possible to destroy'' 
efforts to bring peace between Israel and the Palestinians, the 
president said, "If you believe Iran is the reason for the failure, 
you are making a second mistake.'' Why, he asked, should the 
Palestinians be asked to "pay for an event they had nothing to do 
with'' in World War II, saying that they had nothing to do with the 
systematic killing of Jews - if those killings, he added, had 
happened at all.

  "In World War II about 60 million people were killed,'' he said at 
one point, when pressed again on his refusal to accept that the 
Holocaust happened. "Two million were military. Why is such 
prominence given to a small portion of those 60 million?''

  A few minutes later, he asked a question himself: "In the Council on 
Foreign Relations, is there any voice of support for the 
Palestinians?'' 

  'Heading for a massive confrontation'

  Mr. Ahmadinejad's habit of answering every question about Iranian 
policy with a question about American policy was clearly wearing on 
some of the members, but at the end they acknowledged that he was 
about as skillful an interlocutor as they had ever encountered. "He 
is a master of counterpunch, deception, circumlocution,'' Mr. 
Scowcroft said, shaking his head. Mr. Blackwill emerged from the 
conversation wondering how the United States would ever be able to 
negotiate with this Iranian government.

  "If this man represents the prevailing government opinion in Tehran, 
we are heading for a massive confrontation with Iran," he said.

  In fact, on the main issue speeding the two countries toward 
confrontation, Iran's nuclear program, the president was unwilling to 
discuss specifics. He insisted that he was fully cooperating with the 
International Atomic Energy Agency, even though it had pages of 
questions his government refused to answer.

  Instead, he steered the whole conversation toward Iran's rights 
under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, ignoring an effort by 
Ashton B. Carter, a Harvard professor, to get him to answer whether 
the nuclear effort was worth the cost to Iranian society. 

  "The U.S. doesn't speak for the whole world,'' Mr. Ahmadinejad 
responded, noting that at a meeting of nonaligned nations in Cuba 
over the weekend "118 countries defended the right of Iran to 
enrich.''

  And as he left, it was with a jab to his hosts. "At the beginning of 
the session, you said you were an independent group,'' he said. "But 
almost everything that I was asked came from a government position.'' 
Then he smiled, thanked everyone and left the room with a light 
step.    

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