Thursday, January 29, 2009
Iran and USA difficult pasts
For Iran and the USA the difficult times of talking get under way. The leak of the US President’s (alleged) draft letter to the Iranian President matches to the public demand from Iran for apologies for past US actions against Iraq.
It might be easier for Obama if the key past events were all the relics of Republican administrations. However Iran is likely to be aware of this action under the Presidency of Democratic President Jimmy Carter, as reported by Robert Fisk, interviewing a notable German arms dealer in 1987:
Which in turn no doubt helped that arms trader to do business in Iraq. Iraq attacked Iran on 21 September 1980.
The 1981 onwards Reagan administration of course became extremely explicit in its support of Iraq.
Much dirty linen of all kinds lurks in the shadows of hidden washbaskets.
It might be easier for Obama if the key past events were all the relics of Republican administrations. However Iran is likely to be aware of this action under the Presidency of Democratic President Jimmy Carter, as reported by Robert Fisk, interviewing a notable German arms dealer in 1987:
So it was true, I asked him, that he had given the CIA’s intelligence on the Iranian army to the Iraqi government?
“Mr Fisk… at the very beginning of the war in September 1980 I was invited to go to the Pentagon. And there I was handed the very latest US satellite photographs of the Iranian front lines. You could see everything on the pictures … the Iranian gun emplacements … the lines of trenches on the eastern side of the Karun river, the tank emplacements … all the way up the Iranian side of the border towards Kurdistan .. and I travelled with these maps (via Germany) to Baghdad. The Iraqis were grateful.
Robert Fisk in his book “The Great War for Civilisation” page 940 in my paperback edition
Which in turn no doubt helped that arms trader to do business in Iraq. Iraq attacked Iran on 21 September 1980.
The 1981 onwards Reagan administration of course became extremely explicit in its support of Iraq.
Much dirty linen of all kinds lurks in the shadows of hidden washbaskets.
Labels: Fisk, Iran, Iraq, Obama
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