That’s not how Cheney Rolls
USA Today is reporting that the Bush administration rejected an early offer from Iran to help pacify Iraq. Iran offered to help stabilize its neighbor country and to end military support for Hezbollah and Hamas in exchange for the U.S. lifting sanctions on Iran and quashing a militant Iranian opposition group with bases in Iraq.
The U.S. State Department was open to the offer, which came in an unsigned letter sent shortly after the American invasion of Iraq, but Cheney nipped the deal in the bud, Lawrence Wilkerson, former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell’s chief of staff, told BBC’s Newsnight in a program broadcast Wednesday night.
“We thought it was a very propitious moment to [strike the deal],” Wilkerson said, “But as soon as it got to the White House, and as soon as it got to the vice president’s office, the old mantra of ‘We don’t talk to evil’ … reasserted itself.”
As shrewd as Cheney is thought to be, I think this is really a testament to his simple-mindedness. To pursue a strategy of regional diplomacy with Iran, knowing that a stable Iraq was in their best interest as well as ours, would not have fit into the “axis of evil” narrative defined by the administration. Therefore, it could not even be considered.
