1 The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign ...

art of the country from the earliest times, whether it's prehistoric or in the Achaemenid
period or Parthians or Sassanids or the present period. I'm very interested in the
archeology, having gone to all of the major sites and dug in many of them. I have many
friends there, I like the food and music and the way of life. The climate is superb.
Everything's up over a mile high or more. It's a glorious climate, although the pollution of
meagcities like Tehran is tragic.
So I have maintained an interest in Iran since I first served there as a junior officer. I'm
involved now in many of the key Iran issues in track two diplomacy, since we don't have
any normal diplomacy and are refusing the offers to have it from the Iranians. Track II
consists of discussion with Iranian officials and prominent Iranian citizens about what
rapprochement would mean and require. I've been involved in Track II discussions as a
member of meetings sponsored by the United Nations Association in Sweden, New York
and Vienna, to Search for Common Ground, in Sweden, Austria and in Iran and here. The
agendas are understood and what the solutions might be; rapprochement could move very
quickly.
I had a prospect on the issue of Iran’s intention of pursuing the construction of a nuclear
fuel cycle within the limits of the NPT. There is profound disagreement between Iran and
the United States and the EU on Iran’s interpretation of its rights under the NPT. The
United States and Iran do not have direct negotiations. As it happens, the key negotiators
for the Iranians are from the last generation of American-trained physicists and diplomats,
that is, they received graduate training here, and in some cases as undergraduates as well.
These diplomats are people that we can talk to and I do talk to them very easily and
directly. For example, the ambassador to the UN from Iran in New York, Javad Zarif, has
lived for over half his life in America. His high school, college and graduate school
education was in the United States. He is a good friend. Amir Mahallati, who is the son of
an ayatollah, is now succeeding his father as a chief cleric in Shiraz. He was a key
negotiator at the UN bringing the Iran-Iraq War to an end. The ambassador in Paris, the
ambassadors in Vienna and Bern, several people now in Tehran that are working together
on the issues of concluding an agreement on nonproliferation. I have no right or authority
to negotiate, and I'm not negotiating. But we are discussing the issues, I know what the
details and framework of sound agreement would be, and I've conveyed that to our
government. What I've been doing in an informal way is informing each side of each
other’s views and laying out as fully as possible, conceivable outcomes.
I'm able to do that because I know the players and I know the issues. I know the arms
control problems, because I've been working on those matters for 40 years, and I've been
fully educated in the science and technology by our best scientists when I was working on
the Hill in the 1960s and 1970s on the same kinds of questions. I've been to SALT. I
know the ABM issue backwards and forwards. I was one of the key staff persons on the
ABM Treaty and the SALT Treaty.
Perhaps it is an accident that what I have done in the past is pertinent and useful now. But
I think it is more than serendipity that I know Iran, having kept at it because of personal
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