You knew this was coming -- Iran seeminly, doesn't understand The Chicago Way
US President Barack Obama's offer to talk to Iran shows that America's policy of "domination" has failed, the government spokesman said on Saturday.
"This request means Western ideology has become passive, that capitalist thought and the system of domination have failed," Gholam Hossein Elham was quoted as saying by the Mehr news agency. "Negotiation is secondary, the main issue is that there is no way but for (the United States) to change," he added.
After nearly three decades of severed ties, Obama said shortly after taking office this month that he is willing to extend a diplomatic hand to Tehran if the Islamic republic is ready to "unclench its fist".
In response, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad launched a fresh tirade against the United States, demanding an apology for its "crimes" against Iran and saying he expected "deep and fundamental" change from Obama. Iranian politicians frequently refer to the US administration as the "global arrogance", "domineering power" and "Great Satan".
Tensions with the United States have soared over Iran's nuclear drive and Ahmadinejad's vitriolic verbal attacks against Washington's close regional ally Israel.
Former US president George W. Bush refused to hold talks with the Islamic republic -- which he dubbed part of an "axis of evil" -- unless it suspended uranium enrichment, and never took a military option to thwart Tehran's atomic drive off the table.
The new administration of Obama has also refused to rule out any options -- including military strikes -- to stop Tehran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.
The UN nuclear chief said on Thursday that Iran should fully disclose its nuclear programmes at the same time the US starts dialogue with Tehran without preconditions. Iran's foreign minister said President Barack Obama must declare how his policies will differ from former President George Bush's.
The manoeuvring over possible US Iranian dialogue came as Mohammad Al Baradei welcomed Obama's statements that the new US administration was willing to talk to Iran after the Bush administration's refusal to deal with Tehran.
In an interview on Tuesday, Obama condemned Iran's threats to destroy Israel and its alleged pursuit of nuclear weapons, but added: "It is important for us to be willing to talk to Iran, to express very clearly where our differences are, but where there are potential avenues for progress."
"That is the way to go," Al Baradei said at the World Economic Forum in Davos. "It is long overdue." "Iran should answer technical questions from the IAEA and the dialogue should start without preconditions," Al Baradei said in the presence of Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
