Pour mémoire, la chronique des contacts USA-Iran depuis 15 ans

Dans la querelle USA-Iran, il est bon d’avoir à l’esprit, ou disons en mémoire, les relations entre les USA et l’Iran de ces 10-15 dernières années. Depuis la fin de l’administration Bush-père (très partisane d’un dialogue), c’est une suite ininterrompue de rebuffades, d’erreurs, d’inattentions, essentiellement US vis-à-vis des Iraniens. On retrouve dans l’approche favorisée aussi bien par l’administration Clinton que par l’administration Bush-fils, la propension US à ne tenir aucun compte de la souveraineté nationale des autres en décrétant par avance qui, dans une direction étrangère, est digne d’être consulté et qui ne l'est pas.

Nous empruntons à une chronique de Steve Clemons, sur son site The Washington Note en date du 15 octobre, une citation qu’il fait de la journaliste de USA Today Barbara Slavin (auteur du livre très récemment paru: Bitter Friends, Bosom Enemies: Iran, the US and the Twisted Path to Confrontation). Clemons a demandé à Slevin de résumer ces relations. On trouvera de quoi apprécier d’une façon plus concrète la thèse implicite en vogue aujourd’hui selon laquelle la crise iranienne est autant morale que stratégique, qu’il y a dans l’attitude de l’Iran un danger menaçant la civilisation, que la crise ne peut se régler qu’en imposant à l’Iran des mesures fermes et sans concession.

«The first Bush administration, according to Brent Scowcroft, was eager for contacts with Iran. “We're happy to do it,” Scowcroft told me he told various intermediaries. “We could have it official, public or private citizen to private citizen, any way you want it.” The two sides got as far in 1990 as agreeing to meet in Switzerland, but “at the last minute the Iranians pulled the plug,” Scowcroft said.

Under Clinton, relations took several steps back because of ‘dual containment’ — the effort to sanction and isolate both Iran and Iraq. After Mohammad Khatami was elected Iranian president in 1997, a warming trend ensued but the Clinton administration made a fatal error — since continued by George W. Bush.

»It sought to distinguish between the parts of the Iranian regime it liked — namely Khatami — and the parts it didn't — namely supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Iran's military and intelligence establishment. Clinton went so far as to name a delegation to meet with the Khatami government, a team consisting of Bruce Riedel, his top NSC Mideast adviser, then undersecretary of State Tom Pickering and deputy assistant secretary David Welch. But the Iranians wouldn't bite.

»Enter George W. Bush. He had the best chance to patch up relations after 9-11 and he blew it. The U.S. and Iran both opposed the Taliban and Iran believed Bush and Cheney, as ex-oilmen, would lift sanctions. Unknown to many, the U.S. and Iran held secret, one-on-one high-level talks in Paris and Geneva from the fall of 2001 through May 2003, talks led on the U.S. side by Ryan Crocker and Zalmay Khalilzad.

»In early May 2003, through Swiss intermediaries, the Iranians also presented an offer for comprehensive negotiations (reprinted in the annex to my book). Bush, full of hubris over Iraq, did not even give the Iranians the courtesy of a reply. The Europe talks ended, meanwhile, after yours truly wrote about them on the front page of USA TODAY and al-Qaeda bombings took place in Saudi Arabia that the White House said were linked to al-Qaeda detainees in Iran.

»The Iranians did not give up, however. In late 2005 and through the spring of 2006, Ali Larijani, their new national security adviser, sought backchannel talks with Steve Hadley. Larijani went so far as to publicly accept a prior U.S. offer of talks on Iraq in March 2006. Supreme leader Khamenei publicly endorsed the talks, something he had never done before. Again, Bush sawed off the limb. The upshot: Larijani was weakened, Khamenei humiliated and Iran accelerated its nuclear program and its intervention in Iraq.»

Mis en ligne le 19 octobre 2007 à 12H29