Visas for Iranians, not bunker
busters Jens Kastner
As
the Israeli air force is getting ready to go it
alone against the subterranean chambers where Iran
is making enriched uranium, and its US counterpart
wonders whether massive new munitions will deliver
the necessary bang, an American retired senior
diplomat in his mid-70s has been traveling the
world to prevent that war happen. He made it his
mission to convince US foreign service circles
that the solution to the standoff is not
bunker-busting bombs but respect for Iranians who
apply for US visas.
From his post as vice
consul at the US Embassy in Tehran in the late
1960s to that of acting consul in Uzbekistan's
Tashkent in 2003, Thomas R Hutson's CV spans
dozens of high-ranking jobs in US embassies and
international agencies around the world.
Unlike many of those in Washington's inner
circles, Hutson knows the Iranian people well, the
Iranian language - the situation
on the ground. The
retired diplomat sees a concrete chance to
dramatically improve US-Iran relations unlike many
other observers do in Washington and elsewhere. He
says that to prevent a cataclysmic disaster, it's
crucial to understand that the proud Iranian
people want to be welcomed back into the community
of nations.
Hutson has lately been trying
to pitch this notion to US active-duty diplomats
as well as other relevant figures, and his ongoing
trip to meet that objective took him to Taipei.
As the US and Iran do not maintain
diplomatic relations, Hutson puts non-profit
"American Centers for Iranian Relations" at the
core of his concept. The first of these entities
to be roughly modeled after the American Institute
in Taiwan (AIT), which is the American de facto
embassy in Taipei in absence of official ties,
would be set up in Hutson's home state of
Nebraska.
If such centers in other US
states were to follow, their first goal would be
to deal with the tens of thousands of Iranians
refused visas "for reasons that often are not
defensible", as Hutson puts it. That would lead on
eventually to the conduct of cultural and
commercial relations between Americans and the
people of Iran.
"As the best possible
result, it [change in Iran] could become as swift
and silent as the coming down of the Berlin Wall,"
Hutson said. "This is by no means intended to be a
regime-change Trojan horse. But, once it is
underway, who would be the government figure that
would stop it from operating?"
The
elaborate plan sees neither US personnel stationed
nor a US facility set up on Iranian soil. In what
could be named "North American Visa Data
Collection Points" to eventually be located in the
Iranian cities of Mashad, Isfahan, Shiraz, Bandar
Abbas, Khorramshahr, Hamedan, Tabriz and Karaj,
staff at existing Iranian travel agencies that
serve the North American market would collect
applications for visas of Iranians who in the past
decades have been rejected.
Back in the
"American Centers for Iranian Relations" in the
US, the data would then be evaluated by a "Visa
Refusal Review Board" made up of retirees with
consular experience. The simple act of entering
prior refusal data into a base in Iran to be
considered by such as board would likely not
require US legislative action.
"The vast
majority of such refusals will quickly be
overcome, generating a wave of long-overdue
reconsiderations. Following this initial process,
there will be other endeavors and initiatives that
will capture the spirit of a renewed
relationship", Hutson said.
"This will
bring peace and understanding throughout the
region, while securing the well being and
prosperity of all its inhabitants."
The
outcome of American war simulations involving both
deterrence and retaliation on potential
adversaries like Iran suggests that in case of an
Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, Iran
would launch missiles on Israel and conduct
terrorist-style attacks on US civilian and
military personnel overseas. When Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with President
Barrack Obama at the White House on March 5, talks
on such potential spirals of bloodshed certainly
were on the very top of the agenda.
There
are indications that for initiatives like Hutson's
the US government is not receptive at the moment.
In Taipei, the American de facto
ambassador William Stanton - once Hutson's
classmate - turned down the request to meet over a
cup of coffee. In Colombo, Sri Lanka, the US
ambassador seemed too busy to even have a
telephone conversation.
The Iranian
reception of the retired diplomat was much
friendlier. At the Iranian Embassy in Bangkok,
Hutson conducted an hour-long conversation with
Mojtaba Zahedi, Counselor of Embassy, who, as
Hutson said, "took copious notes, asked good
questions and clearly understood what we have in
mind."
In Colombo, the American was
received warmly by Ambassador Dr M N Hassani Pour
and Second Secretary Ali Akbar Baba and was also
granted an hour to explain his plan.
While
having so far been given the cold shoulder from
the US government, there's a somewhat impressive
list of prominent figures who back the endeavor or
have at least expressed an interest. On it is
Lowell Bruce Laingen, the US charge d'affaires in
Iran in the late 1970s who was held for 444 days
during the Iran hostage crisis.
There's
also Ambassador John W Limbert, the former Deputy
Assistant Secretary of State for Iran in the State
Department's Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs;
retired Ltieutenant General David Barno, who is a
former Coalition Commander in Afghanistan; E
Thomas Greene, formerly US Consul in Iran's fourth
largest city of Tabriz; and Dr Richard T Arndt,
former cultural affairs officer in the United
States Information Agency (USIA) in Tehran during
the late 1960s and early 1970s.
In the
first half of March, Hutson will lead an
American-Canadian group comprised of people who
were once held hostage in the US embassy in
Tehran, his own granddaughter, a cleric,
filmmakers, journalists and an entrepreneur to
Iran to meet with the families of victims of the
Iran Air civilian plane that was shot down by a US
guided missile cruiser in 1988 over the Strait of
Hormuz, resulting in the death of nearly 300
innocent civilians.
The US government has
paid compensation but never admitted
responsibility, nor apologized to Iran. Then-vice
president George H W Bush was infamously quoted as
saying "I'll never apologize for the United States
of America. Ever. I don't care what the facts
are", and Hutson's group finds it's long-overdue
that Americans lay a wreath at an appropriate
memorial in Iran to the victims.
"Our
proposal intends to start the process of healing
the open wound. Other benefits could arise from
that singularly human act", Hutson said. "Will it
bring down the nuclear specter posed by the
current government leadership? Doubtful; but
history has a funny way of unfolding in a
counterintuitive way."
Asia Times Online
confronted US political scientists with a roundup
of Hutson's initiative. Their comments augur that
if there were to be such thing as US government
hindsight, it could come well after the guns are
leveled.
"I am strongly in favor of
opening embassies or offices in countries like
Iran or North Korea. I don't think Washington is
likely to adopt this approach, however", said
Arthur Waldron, founder and vice president of the
International Assessment and Strategy Center in
Washington.
John F Copper, a professor of
international studies at Rhodes College in
Memphis, Tennessee, has his doubts. He believes
that if the consular services, as Hutson envisions
them, showed that they were working, the Iranian
government could and would immediately stop them,
and that the US government would hardly consider
getting in the boat in the first place.
"It would probably not gain any public
support, which is important given this is an
election year. Then there would be concern that
this would possibly be used to bring terrorists
into the US," Copper said.
Jens
Kastner is a Taipei-based journalist.
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