re: #625 NJDhockeyfan

Obama’s solution was to sit down and talk with them. That is not going to work. Meanwhile the centrifuges continue to spin and the Middle East is getting closer to chaos. I want to see Obama get tough with the Iranians. I won’t hold my breath though.

Here’s a list of Bush Administration contacts with Iran:

Bush Administration Contacts with Iran - Direct and Indirect
November 10, 2008

One year sample:

July 24, 2007 — The US Ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, and his Iranian counterpart Hassan Kazemi Qomi, held a second round of talks in Baghdad.

August 6, 2007 — The US Ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, and his Iranian counterpart Hassan Kazemi Qomi held a third round of talks in Baghdad.

August 20-21, 2007 — extensive talks in Tehran between Iran and the UN’s nuclear agency.

October 7, 2007 — The top US military commander in Iraq, Gen David Petraeus, accused Iran’s ambassador, Hassan Kazemi Qomi of belonging to the Quds force, which he accused of “lethal involvement and activities” in Iraq, “providing the weapons, the training, the funding and in some cases the direction for operations” against U.S. and Iraqi forces.

October 16, 2007 — Russian President Vladimir Putin met Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Ahmadinejad at a summit meeting of five Caspian Sea nations in Iran.

October 23, 2007 — Solana and the new Iranian nuclear negotiator met in Rome.

November 20, 2007 — The U.S. and Iran agree to fourth round of Crocker/Qomi talks.

November 30, 2007 — Iran’s new chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili met with Javier Solana, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, in London.

January 11-12, 2008 — ElBaradei visited Iran and met Iran’s leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

January 27, 2008 — U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Zalmay Khalilzad attends multilateral meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki and Mojtaba Samare Hashemi, a top advisor to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Davos, Switzerland. State Department says it was “unauthorized.”

May 7, 2008 — Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said there was no point in having talks with Washington as long as US forces continued attacking Shiite militias in Baghdad and therefore a fourth round of talks between the United States and Iran over the security situation in Iraq is unlikely to go ahead.

June 14, 2008 — Javier Solana, travelled to Iran with representatives from the E3 (France, Germany and the UK) and from China and Russia to present Iran a new offer for negotiations.

July 19, 2008 — Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs William Burns accompanied Solana and representatives of the E3+3 to meet with Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili in Geneva.

Also:

March 11, 2005 — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says that the United States will “make an effort to actively support the EU-3’s negotiations with the Iranians” and lift a decade-long block on Iran’s membership of the World Trade Organization, and end objections to Tehran obtaining parts for commercial planes.

January 12, 2006 — EU3 call off nuclear talks with Iran and say Tehran should be referred to UN Security Council.

May 31, 2006 — In a major policy shift, Secretary Rice says the U.S. is willing to join the multilateral talks with Iran if Tehran verifiably suspends its nuclear enrichment program. The U.S. also gives assent to a package of carrots and sticks Solana will describe to the Iranians.