St. McCain, who’s Glorious War In Iraq has made Iran the 2nd-most powerful country in the region (second only, of course, to the country with 150 nukes), spoke to AIPAC today and repeated a favorite neocon talking point:

The Iranians have spent years working toward a nuclear program. And the idea that they now seek nuclear weapons because we refuse to engage in presidential-level talks is a serious misreading of history. In reality, a series of administrations have tried to talk to Iran, and none tried harder than the Clinton administration…But even under President Khatami – a man by all accounts less radical than the current president – Iran rejected these overtures.

That would be false. Iran, under Khatami, actively made diplomatic overtures to the Bush Administration in 2003:

Lawrence Wilkerson, then chief of staff to secretary of state Colin Powell, said the failure to adopt a formal Iran policy in 2002-03 was the result of obstruction by a "secret cabal" of neo-conservatives in the administration, led by Vice President Dick Cheney.

"The secret cabal got what it wanted: no negotiations with Tehran," Wilkerson wrote in an e-mail to Inter Press Service (IPS).

The Iranian negotiating offer, transmitted to the State Department in early May 2003 by the Swiss ambassador in Tehran, acknowledged that Iran would have to address US concerns about its nuclear program, although it made no specific concession in advance of the talks, according to Flynt Leverett, then the National Security Council’s senior director for Middle East Affairs.

Iran’s offer also raised the possibility of cutting off Iran’s support for Hamas and Islamic Jihad and converting Hezbollah into a purely socio-political organization, according to Leverett. That was an explicit response to Powell’s demand in late March that Iran "end its support for terrorism".

In return, Leverett recalls, the Iranians wanted the US to address security questions, the lifting of economic sanctions and normalization of relations, including support for Iran’s integration into the global economic order.

Leverett also recalls that the Iranian offer was drafted with the blessing of all the major political players in the Iranian regime, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khomeini.

Realists, led by Powell and his deputy, Richard Armitage, were inclined to respond positively to the Iranian offer. Nevertheless, within a few days of its receipt, the State Department had rebuked the Swiss ambassador for having passed on the offer.

Here’s all you need to know about AIPAC: they invited John Hagee to address them last year. And St. McCain’s telling those Likudniks what they want to hear — instead of the truth — isn’t straight-talk. It’s the basest kind of pandering.

This is exactly the kind of distortion that Team Obama should expose quickly and aggressively — it’s not only untrue, it puts St. McCain yet again squarely on George Bush’s side. The Bush Administration’s nutty ideological refusal to deal with Iran has not been in the United States’ best interest, and the proof is in the pudding.

Sullivan finds another contradiction here.

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