My Babbling Brain

In “Treacherous Alliance,” Trita Parsi, an adjunct professor at John Hopkins University and president of the National Iranian American Council, contends that shortly after Iran proposed a “grand bargain” to the United States four years ago, Tehran made a similar offer to Israel during an academic meeting in Athens.

During a May 2003 conference in Athens attended by several prominent Israeli analysts and ex-officials, Mohsen Rezai, a former commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, presented what Parsi describes as a bold strategic shift to a group of Israelis. Rezai’s proposal at the conference, which is organized annually by the Greek Foreign Ministry and the University of California, Los Angeles, entailed a more moderate Iranian stance on the Palestinian issue in exchange for Israel dropping its opposition to rapprochement between Washington and Tehran.

Parsi’s version of events, however, was disputed by a senior Israeli who attended the session but refused to be identified in keeping with the meeting’s off-the-record protocol. The Israeli stressed that Rezai’s pitch focused only on finding a modus vivendi on Iraq with the United States and did not touch upon the Israeli-Palestinian issue.

Parsi’s claim was also called into question by some Iran experts, who noted that as a former official Rezai was not speaking on Tehran’s behalf. The former Revolutionary Guard commander, they added, was criticized upon his return to Iran for meeting with Israelis and for discussing such sensitive topics.

Source: Forward