From The Asia Times
By Jim Lobe

Two of Washington’s most prominent foreign policy graybeards praised Saturday’s direct participation in multinational talks with Iran by a senior US diplomat, but called on the administration of President George W Bush to drop his demands that Tehran freeze its uranium enrichment program as a precondition for broader negotiations.

Retired General Brent Scowcroft, who served as national security adviser under Republican presidents Gerald Ford and George H W Bush, and Zbigniew Brzezinski, who held the same post under Democratic President Jimmy Carter, urged Bush to go further by offering immediate rewards to Tehran in exchange for such a freeze.

And both men warned that repeated US threats to use military force against Iran were counter-productive and strengthened hard-line forces in the regime led by President Mahmud Ahmadinejad. They said an actual military attack - whether by the US or by Israel - would likely be disastrous for US interests in the region.

“A war with Iran will produce calamities for sure,” said Brzezinski, who pointed, among other things, to its likely impact on the price of oil and the likelihood that it would create yet another front to add to the two wars - Iraq and Afghanistan - in which US military forces are already engaged.

“[Brzezinski's assessment] may be a little more dire [than mine] but not much,” Scowcroft said in a brief interview after the two men spoke at a briefing sponsored by the Center for Security and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington. “It would turn the region into a cauldron of conflict, bitterness, and hatred. It would turn Islam against us.”

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