The Israeli military brass and especially Uncle Bibi would find Tim Guldimann's advice a bit disconcerting.
They would have to tread ground very carefully if they wanna pull off a strike on Iran.
Posted on 02/04/2010 10:14:42 PM PST by myknowledge
An Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear program will neither completely stop Teheran’s nuclear march, nor bring down the ayatollahs’ regime, according to former Swiss ambassador to Iran Tim Guldimann.
Speaking to The Jerusalem Post on the sidelines of this week’s Herzliya Conference, Guldimann, who knows the Iranian way of thinking well, expressed – as a personal opinion – his deep concern about the military option against Iran.
Guldimann was Swiss ambassador to Iran and Afghanistan from 1999 to 2004. As ambassador to Teheran, Guldimann – now senior adviser and head of the Middle East Project at the Center for Humanitarian Dialogue, Geneva – represented US interests in Iran, acting as a go-between. He gained notoriety for a memorandum he transmitted to the US in 2003, which posited an alleged Iranian proposal for a broad dialogue with the US, with everything on the table – including full cooperation on nuclear programs, acceptance of Israel and the termination of Iranian support for Palestinian armed groups. The proposal was rejected by the Bush administration.
(Excerpt) Read more at jpost.com ...
The Israeli military brass and especially Uncle Bibi would find Tim Guldimann's advice a bit disconcerting.
They would have to tread ground very carefully if they wanna pull off a strike on Iran.
now senior adviser and head of the Middle East Project at the Center for Humanitarian Dialogue, Geneva –
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I didn’t need to ready any further.
If Iran was removed from the map, it would help the entire world.
Depends on the size of the strike. Sadly, it also depends on the US position, currently led by BHO.
Yep. What you said.
Ditto here...except I did...and he’s also a member of the Socialist Party of Switzerland.
Sounds Carter-ish.
Or a globalist elite front - the name says it all.
Yeah...well a strike AGAINST IRAN, wouldn’t hurt either!
He wants to use all uncertainties as reasons for Israel not acting -— but of course as a Euro-socialist he really isn’t interested in Israel’s best interests and long-term security. For him (in his view) he risks absolutely nothing with a nuclear-capable Iran. He states that Iran might stop short of actual nuclear weapons creation, which sounds like an absurd liberal fantasy to people with a grounding in reality.
One thing I do agree with is that any Israeli strikes have to be successful enough to really set back the Iranian nuclear program a very long time — it really doesn’t help matters to introduce only a delay of a year or two. There is the prospect of motivating the Iranian regime pour even more resources into a renewed nuclear program with more remote and deep buried facilities, I would guess. Can they really be stopped in the longer run of more than a few years? The USA could do it but hard to imagine anything happening under Obambi....
I simply don’t know what the prospects are for airstrikes that could really disable this program for quite a few years. But if Israeli officials have enough grounds to believe that’s a likely outcome, and given that nothing else is going to stop the Mullahs from acquiring nukes, then Israel will need to go for it.
>>>”Guldimann was Swiss ambassador to Iran and Afghanistan from 1999 to 2004.”
>>>”He gained notoriety for a memorandum he transmitted to the US in 2003, which posited an alleged Iranian proposal for a broad dialogue with the US, with everything on the table”
Note the years 1999 to 2004. Those were the yrs when mullah Mohammad Khatami was the Islamic “reformist” President of Iran.
Mullah Mohammad Khatami, being an integral part of IRI’s “reformist” faction (a.k.a propaganda *moderate* wing) advocated “Dialogue amongst Civilizations”. He is also known as a sound orator & An effective Islamic Republic (IR) propagandist. Khatami was welcomed & accepted by quite a few key European governments, as well as by a few in the Bush Administration.
Also, in 2003, many in the IR clearly feared the U.S. and a possible attack on Iran because of “Axis of Evil” speech by G.W. Bush and of course the action on Iraq – they feared Iran would be the next in line, so they went into crisis management mode namely advocating broad *dialogue*.
Noteworthy is that during Khatami’s presidency in 1999, the first major Student revolt in Iran took place. Khatami took little to no action, and many Iranians students were arrested, tortured, imprisoned, and a few were killed.
Ahmadinejad became president of Iran in 2005.
Some background info on Student Uprising of 1999 in Iran:
http://www.payvand.com/news/04/jul/1038.html
Some background info on IR *reformist* ex-president Mohammad Khatami:
http://www.iranian.com/Namazie/2006/October/Khatami/index.html
>>>”One thing I do agree with is that any Israeli strikes have to be successful enough to really set back the Iranian nuclear program a very long time — it really doesn’t help matters to introduce only a delay of a year or two.”
Agreed. But, not just the “nuclear program”. I guess there would have to be other KEY targets as well.
Guldimann’s “proposal” from Iran was a two-bit scap of paper whose only value has been to advance anti-Americanism, anti-Bush propaganda and anti-Israeli sentiment within progressive circles.
American Thinker blows the lid off of Guldimann.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/11/did_iran_offer_a_grand_bargain.html
Food for serious thought:
I think it’s time we started holding Nations accountable as Nations. If a thug takes over a Nation, whose responsibility is it to remove him ? ?????????? ??????
Just what is anyone else supposed to do ?
And when the thug leader attacks another country, after None of his subjects successfully removed them, what is the country that got attacked to do ?
I propose the country that got attacked wreaks havoc on that thug-ruled nation as quickly and efficiently as possible, giving only warning for citizens to flee to the hills. And then, come home as soon as it is finished, and then the thug-ruled country can build a new country. And maybe then they’ll get rid of the thug.
The United States of America started by revolting against their overlord.
More serious food for thought:
Do you know who & where George III was during American Revolution?
Iranian thugs and power centre with ALL their military & thuggish capability are sitting in Iran. Iranian people have been revolting too against their own ruling thugs.
Do you know who provided essential help to those rebels in America, which helped them succeed, without ordering them to “flee to the hills” ?
Ok, responses...
Where was George - he was far away, but his soldiers were here with bells on; we fought and died, a LOT of U.S. pow’s died in British captivity.
Iranian people revolting - great, keep goin’ folks ! It’s not easy, it never is. The Germans had a dickens of time in failed attempts to kill Hitler, it is not easy. But responsibility can only logically _start_ at home. It’s tough for the U.S. to help in these situations, it depends on which way political winds are blowing. Great U.S. Presidents have always tried to help the cause of freedom, but the lefty media here hammers them for it. But we can’t say Britain, France, Japan, the U.S., any other country is more responsible to oust a dictator in another country than it’s own citizens are; just my opinion, but I don’t see any other way.
Help for American Revolution - of course, we were not in Britain and we were not attacking, say France, who helped us; in essence, it would make no sense for a third-part country to come over and bomb us at the time of the American Revolution. In Iran’s case, the leadership is saber-rattling with nukes and sending operatives out all over, so they are heading towards a situation where Iran - as a nation - is an aggressor and will force some other nation to strike it out of fear of imminent threat.
I happened to catch Tony Blair being raked over the coals for getting Britain into the Iraq war, and he point blank told the dufusi (?) questioning him that as the guy responsible for the security of Britain he was not prepared to take the risks the intelligence presented, i.e., it’s easy to “armchair” quarterback but much more difficult to make military action decisions when one is in the “driver’s seat”. Lunatic dictators seem to always be either at war or sound like they’re about to be. Trouble is with the dinner jacket guy and the North Korean guy, though they obviously do not have the resources themselves for any lengthy conventional war, they have those serious single-shot weapons that could kill hundreds of thousands, right ? So other nations are forced to be very pragmatic with the thug-ruled nation. Once crackpots take over, there is no easy way out, it is going to be ugly, and undoubtedly the best thought is like taking off a band-aid, just rip it off and get the pain over with.
Whether it works or not I’d still love to see Israel kick hell out of Iran.
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