to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenehi for talks on all outstanding issues—but Khamenehi spurned the offer.
Mohamed ElBaradei, then the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), proposed the idea of comprehensive talks to Bush and Bush agreed.
The failed effort by Bush was revealed by Hassan Rohani, who then headed Iran’s nuclear team under President Mohammad Khatami. Rohani detailed what happened in an interview with the magazine Mehrnameh and The Independent of London reported on it Monday.
The talks were to be aimed at reaching a “grand bargain” over all outstanding differences between Washington and Tehran, not just the nuclear issue.
Rohani said Bush authorized ElBaradei to launch the effort. ElBaradei contacted Rohani, and Rohani passed the offer on to Khamenehi. Khamenehi said no.
Rohani told Mehrnameh, “The decision was taken by the nezam [system] that that we shouldn’t at that point negotiate with America.”
It isn’t known why Rohani chose to make the Bush approach public at the time. Some thought it might be part of an effort by Iranian pragmatists to pressure Khamenehi into being more flexible in the revived nuclear talks due to resume in Baghdad on May 23.
Previously, the Bush Administration had been widely seen as hostile to a rapprochement with Iran, while Barack Obama was credited with departing from that policy by offering to “reach out a hand” to Tehran. However, the Bush Administration actually had numerous contacts with Iran in its early years, none of which went anywhere.
Analysts have often cited the rejection of an earlier Iranian request to open negotiations in 2003 in the aftermath of the US-led invasion of Iraq. Some news reports asserted that proposal – communicated through the Swiss embassy – was rejected by the White House with the rejoinder: “We don’t talk to evil.” But that really made no sense since Bush officials talked with Iranian officials both before and after the 2003 event. Others have said the Bush White House saw the 2003 approach as a Swiss initiative rather than an Iranian idea.
Bush took a different tack when ElBaradei visited Washington in the spring of 2004 to discuss Iran. ElBaradei urged the US to join the negotiations over the Iranian nuclear program, being led at the time by the European trio of Britain, France and Germany. (The US, China and Russia subsequently all joined.)
Rohani explained, “Bush in response said: Why just the nuclear issue? Why don’t we solve all the issues between us.” Rohani said he was quoting ElBaradei telling him what the US President said.
The IAEA chief was so taken aback that he phoned Rohani asking for an immediate meeting in Tehran.
Rohani was clearly displeased with the subsequent rejection. He compared the difference between talking to the Europeans and the US to that between driving a small Iranian car or a German Mercedes. “Our decision was not to drive the Mercedes Benz, so we drove the Paykan,” he said.