{"id":1922,"date":"2006-09-04T04:20:00","date_gmt":"2006-09-04T04:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=1922"},"modified":"2006-09-04T04:20:00","modified_gmt":"2006-09-04T04:20:00","slug":"1922","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=1922","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>A BUMP IN THE ROAD TO WAR<\/b><\/p>\n<p>The Bush administration, in a clear diplomatic signal, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chicagotribune.com\/news\/local\/northshore\/chi-0609010228sep01,1,705987.story?coll=chi-newslocalnorthshore-hed\">granted a last minute visa to former Iranian president Mohammed Khatami <\/a>to attend not only a session of the UN, but the conference of the Islamic Society of North America in Chicago, where he delivered the keynote address ( conveniently, the Undersecretary of Defense was also in town). Khatami has also been invited to speak at the National Cathedral in Washington D.C. and at Harvard University.<\/p>\n<p>This was a win-win diplomatic move by the Bush administration. At one stroke, the opportunity for quiet, frank, unofficial but very high level dialogue was created; Khatami was given prominent public forums to insulate himself from hardline criticism at home when he returns with American messages; Some wind is taken out of Ahmadinejad&#8217;s sails by the deference shown to his predecessor; Critics of the Bush administration at home and in Europe are also disarmed by the gesture which doesn&#8217;t fit their political script, strengthening the U.S. position before the UNSC has to discuss sanctioning Iran for illegal nuclear activities.<\/p>\n<p>Not sure who engineered this move, but they deserve a pat on the back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A BUMP IN THE ROAD TO WAR The Bush administration, in a clear diplomatic signal, granted a last minute visa to former Iranian president Mohammed Khatami to attend not only a session of the UN, but the conference of the Islamic Society of North America in Chicago, where he delivered the keynote address ( conveniently, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1922\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}