Iran Slugfest: Condi vs. Mohammed

Iran Updates:

Condi Rice is back in the Middle East and talking about Iran.

Note the stories today quoting the Secretary of State taking a dig at the International Atomic Energy Agency, 48 hours after IAEA Chief Mohammed ElBaradei warned against reckless talk about attacking Iran.

In Rice's view, apparently, ElBaradei should keep his mouth shut:

"The IAEA is not in the business of diplomacy. The IAEA is a technical agency that has a board of governors of which the United States is a member... It is not up to anybody to diminish or to begin to cut back on the obligations that the Iranians have been ordered to take."

True, the IAEA chief has been a forceful advocate of diplomacy to resolve the dispute with Iran. ElBaradei was at the helm of the agency when it won the Nobel Peace Prize. He and the the U.N.-related agency are recognized as moral voices that represent humanity rather than a particular government. We need this in the post-Iraq world, judging from the episode that prompted ElBaradei's comments.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner began the contretemps when he declared over the weekend concerning Iran: "We have to prepare for the worst, and the worst is war."

ElBaradei told reporters in Vienna the next day, "I would not talk about any use of force... I do not believe at this stage that we are facing a clear and present danger that require we go beyond diplomacy."

Bizarrely, the French Defense Minister himself, Herve Morin, suggested today that Kouchner's "war" remarks were out of line. Kouchner had said, "We are trying to put in place plans which are the privilege of chiefs of staff." But Morin called this bull-merde: "Nobody should think for a single instant that we are imagining and preparing military plans concerning Iran."

With Dick Cheney's allies churning out "bomb-Iran" Op-Eds, it's curious that Rice would go out of her way to diminish the moral authority of the IAEA. Perhaps it was ElBaradei's own dig at the U.S. invasion of Iraq: "I would hope that everybody would have gotten the lesson after the Iraq situation."

Certainly, in the circumstances, one could quibble with Rice's assertion that the IAEA is "not in the business of diplomacy." If it's not, clearly it ought to be. With her government refusing to talk directly to Iran on the nuclear issue, and Iranians feeling that Europe does not have the muscle to conclude negotiations, the IAEA may ultimately be a decisive influence for coaxing the Iranians into meeting their nuclear obligations.

Is the Iranian regime, facing more U.N. and possibly European Union sanctions, sending a conciliatory message?

Parnaz Azima, an Iranian-American journalist for the U.S. government's Persian broadcast channel, Radio Farda, was permitted to leave Iran today, after a forced stay of more than eight months. She had been out on bail after being detained for cooperating with "anti-revolutionary" media.

Azima is the second Iranian-American detainee to be freed this month. Earlier in September, Iran allowed Haleh Esfandiari, a scholar at the Wilson Center in Washington, to leave the country. She had spent more than three months in Evin Prison.

Iran apparently continues to hold two other Iranians with Western ties:

--Kian Tajbakhsh, an urban planner working with the Open Society Institute of the Soros Foundation. Click here to learn more about Tajbakhsh.

--Ali Shakeri, a dual national, of the Center for Citizen Peacebuilding at the University of California, Irvine. Like Azima and Esfandiari, Shakeri had gone to Iran to visit an elderly parent.

Esfandiari wrote a fascinating piece about her ordeal in Sunday's Washington Post.

Her calm, dispassionate approach should be a lesson to the politicians, in Iran as well as the U.S. (and, now, France!).

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is due at the U.N. this week for what has become his annual foray on to the American political scene.

With the U.S. presidential campaign ramping up, and President Bush pondering military and other options for dealing with Iran, it should be an interesting visit!

--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo