US/Iran: Hearing Out Both Sides

After five years of the Bush noise machine, it's important to remember to hear exactly what is being said in any dialogue. President Bush and Condoleezza Rice have a nasty habit of referring to straw men that they knock down with their arguments, except that it's very hard to find the straw men in real life that they're knocking down. To have a dialogue, you have to hear the predominant arguments of the day and address those arguments; or, at least hear what the other person is actually saying, not just what the Republican spin machine says the other guy is saying. Juan Cole of Informed Comment has a post on the details of what the Iranians are actually saying:

The US media presented only a snippet from the speech of Supreme Jurisprudent Ali Khamenei of Iran on Sunday, in which he threatened to damage oil supplies to the West if the US militarily attacked Iran. He did say that, but he also announced that Iran had no intention of striking first, had not attacked and would not attack another country, and that it has no nuclear weapons program and does not want a nuclear bomb. I didn't hear any of those statements reported on television.

For some strange reason, a relatively full text of important speeches given by world leaders is almost never provided to the public by any US media in English.

If Bush's negotiations with Iran are to be taken seriously, it is important for everyone to know what the Iranians are saying. Juan Cole provides a copy of Khamenei's speech.

Keep in mind that when two nations don't see eye to eye, they can hurl speeches at each other for decades as the US and Iran have done, but a more peaceful accomodation requires getting past the rhetoric or the twenty-second sound bite. Everyone in diplomacy knows this. But it's important to know what is being said.