2008 Polls National Iowa New Hampshire General Election GOP | Dem GOP | Dem GOP | Dem Head-to-Head

---

August 22, 2006

Special Report Roundtable - August 22

FOX News Special Report With Brit Hume

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN BOLTON, U.S. AMBASSADOR TO THE U.N.: We've made it clear in the Security Council Resolution 1696 that Iran has a choice. They can either take up the very generous offer that is five permanent members in Germany have extended to them and if they do, there's a possibility of a different relationship with the United States and others, but if they don't we've also made it clear that their unwillingness to give up their pursuit of nuclear weapons will result in our efforts in the Security Council to obtain economic sanctions against them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUME: Well, that was that U.N. Ambassador John Bolton reacting to Iran's response, long awaited, to the package that you heard him just describe of the incentives for Iran to stop its nuclear enrichment program -- uranium enrichment program. He didn't say they said no, but well, let's hear what Mort Kondracke, executive editor of "Roll Call" and Nina Easton, Washington bureau chief of "Fortune" Magazine and the syndicated columnist, Charles Krauthammer have to say about that. They are all FOX NEWS contributors.

Mort, did they -- Iran, in effect say noed to that?

MORT KONDRACKE, "ROLL CALL": Oh, yeah. I mean, I guess the good news is that today is August 22, some people thought that this was going to be because of the Islamic calendar, the day of the apocalypse, I guess it's past midnight now in Tehran so we can figure that today is not the day of the apocalypse. It's the day of the push off. What Iran basically said is that we -- we want to talk, let's talk about nuclear -- serious negotiations. Accept that there's another significant date, which is next Thursday, August 31, which is the day when they are supposed to stop...

HUME: You say they are supposed -- you mean by whom?

KONDRACKE: By the United Nations Security Council.

HUME: Which has done what?

KONDRACKE: Which has given them a deadline to cease uranium enrichment or else. Now, the question is, what is the "or else" going to be? And apparently we've got a list of sanctions worked out but I don't know if they're strong enough.

HUME: Nina, is the administration, which has led the way, here, and brought allies along with it, in danger now of having the allies say, well, I mean, Javier Solana saying today, you know, the -- the use -- well, this is a measure that deserves careful study. It's a 23-page document, but are we likely to have Iran getting the time, it seems to be playing...

NINA EASTON, "FORTUNE" MAGAZINE: Well there's going to be some time unfolding here, we'll see whether China and Russia are on the page about what kinds of sanctions. I think it is clear that there is going to be some movement forward on sanctions.

Look, this is -- Iran was saying the same thing in response to this a couple months ago, that they're saying now, we want serious negotiations, but we're not going to stop enrichment. That's the major issue. And I thought earlier on the program where Iran's supreme leader said America's hands are tied, very telling. I mean, this regime feels embolden. There isn't a sense that they are worried that a military campaign is going to stop them. They see the U.S. bogged down in Iraq. They see what happened to Israel when it went after Hezbollah and there's this sense that they are emboldened and I think it is a real critical moment for the administration.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: It's critical what's happening at the U.N. because this whole elaborate offer that's been on the table now for 2-1/2 months, the Rice initiative where she said OK we may sit down, we may offer a lot of carrots, if and only if that Iranians halt uranium enrichment. That's the condition.

HUME: That's the condition even for the negotiations they say they want to have now.

KRAUTHAMMER: That's right. Everything ends if the Iranians will not suspend uranium enrichment and there's nothing in the offer, however many pages it is, there's nothing in it that will suspend enrichment. Supreme leader has announced they are not going to suspend enrichment, so we know the answer. The answer by Iran is no.

All of this process is a dance. It was never a real offer to Iran. There's nobody in the administration who would suspect that Iran would say yes. It was about carrots for the allies. The allies wanted to go an extra mile, so we said OK, we'll give you an extra three months. In fact, what that meant is that Iran has had an extra three months to enrich, as it has. So we are now behind after months and months behind of Iran to find (ph) the world on enrichment. The question is can we now line up the promises we had lined up in June, when Rice made her initiative? She had said that the allies had promised that if Iran says no, they're all going to go to sanctions, so it'll be a test of whether she can hold allies together. I suspect she will. But the problem is will the sanctions be very weak and meaningless?

HUME: Well, let's assume all of this effort doesn't work. That whatever sanctions are imposed are either insufficient or Iran chooses to defy them anyway and take whatever pain they imposes on Iran and moves ahead. Will all -- does that mean that this whole initiative had failed and served no purpose? Or was this going to be a necessary prelude to something more forceful anyway?

KRAUTHAMMER: Its purpose is that if the end come where's we have to actually use force, and if this is sort of (INAUDIBLE) of Germany in the 1930's, we might have to. This process is a way to at least ensure that our closest allies will not oppose us and denounce us. They will perhaps take a position of neutrality after having -- we have had shown them that we would look for every other avenue.

EASTON: Or to some extent take the lead, I mean there is a concern about Iran in the European community that you didn't see with Iraq, so I do think -- I think you're right, that this has to be...

HUME: So, does that -- does what Nina say suggest that the sanctions might be meaningful?

KONDRACKE: Yeah, don't forget that there was years and years of prelude to the Iraq invasion in U.N. sanctions, where there was a buildup. My suspicion is here that you're going to get -- that what President Bush is trying to do is to get the same sort of international consensus going in case there needs to be a military strike. But don't forget that in the endgame, people like France and the others would not go along with us and don't think they'll go along with us now, even though they know what the serious threat is.

KRAUTHAMMER: What we're purchasing here at most, is a allied acquiescence.

HUME: When we come back with our panel, should the Bush administration now talk with Iran and Syria in an effort to stabilize the Mideast? That question next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID GERGEN, FMR PRESIDENTIAL ADVISOR: I think ultimately, if we're going to have a peaceful Middle East, the United States is going to have to be in negotiation with both Iran and Syria if we want to get there, otherwise we're just going to condemn ourselves to some real hardships.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUME: That was David Gergen, who often reflects a lot of the thinking in Washington, although he's not here at the moment -- about events. And he was talking earlier on FOX NEWS. What about this notion? And you're beginning to hear it in a lot of places that there's nothing to be lost by sitting down and negotiating with Iran and Syria. Now, he wasn't talking specifically there about this nuclear issue, although I suppose that could come up, but about dealing with the problem of Hezbollah, in particular, and other terrorist organizations that are active in the Middle East with support from both of those countries, Iran and Syria. What about this? Is an idea -- is the administration going to be under increasing pressure to do this and does it have a good case for resisting it?

KONDRACKE: Well you know, I -- in principle, I don't think there's anything necessarily wimpy about negotiating with your adversaries. You know, John Kennedy said, never fear to negotiate, never negotiate from fear. And Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon and went off and negotiated with Communist China as a way to break up the Communist bloc. What -- there are a lot of people around, however, who think that this is the answer to confrontation and that -- and their immediate impulse, in negotiation, is to say to the adversary, here, have half of my assets and let's make peace, you know. What you really want to do is negotiate from strength; you want to negotiate with purpose.

I don't necessarily -- I don't think there's anything to be done with the Iranians at the moment in unilateral -- in bilateral negotiations between the U.S. Iranians. We've been negotiating through the Europeans. Now, with Syria, maybe if we've got an agenda that we want to advance, you know, that trading ideas, feeling them out, figuring out whether there's any...

HUME: Well we have allied relationships.

KONDRACKE: Well, we do but we don't have any -- we're not actively engaging in negotiation and the Bush administration has said we're not going to. But having an ambassador there at a certain point might not be such a bad idea.

EASTON: Well, you know, I think you have start with the historical premise that you do not negotiate, you don't choose who you're going to negotiate because you like how they behave necessarily or you like them. I mean, we negotiated with the Soviet Union for decades even, they joined hips on the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. But, you know, I think you go into a negotiation because you want something, you want to get something from that actor, from that player.

And again, I would leave aside the case of Iran, as you would, because that's the U.N. construct of communication. With Syria, though, you can look at the situation and say what are our short-term objectives? Well, we want to disarm Hezbollah, we want Hezbollah under control. Can you get Syria to cooperate? Syria, which by the way, felt diplomatically left out of the cease-fire situation. Can you get them, in some way, to cooperate? And finally, on a more long-term situation, can you use diplomatic -- use negotiations with Syria to break it away from Iran? Can you break up that access? Can you force a wedge through that very dangerous access that's dominating things?

KRAUTHAMMER: The answer is no. Syria -- it's not a question of Syria knowing what American things. Of course it knows what we think. The absence of negotiation is not an absence of our communications of our intentions or our interests. We know what Syria thinks and wants, it knows what we think and want. The issue is Syria has no interest in abandoning Hezbollah, it's extremely helpful to Syria it all kinds of ways. The Iranian, the connection is a lifeline, it's supports them financially, militarily, and makes them important. They made that choice 10 years ago. The question is, is there anything you can get in negotiations other than offering new concessions? And the one axiom of history is if you have an enemy who's declared his intention to destroy you, as Iran has, sort of a messianic arm to cult like Nazi Germany, which is the equivalent of Iran, any negotiation which involves concessions, and they always do, is appeasement. There's nothing less. What you offer will be taken and the goal of destroying you will be advanced. If you're dealing with a partner who compromised, it's different.

---

Sponsored Links

About Us | Contact | Advertise | Privacy Policy         © RealClearPolitics 2006