Jimmy Carter was interviewed yesterday by Wolf Blitzer on CNN where he lambasted the Bush administration for making up its own definition of torture and the Republican candidates for “competing with each other to appeal to the ultra-right-wing, war-mongering element in our country.” And Carter recently told the BBC that the vice president has been “a disaster for our country.” Nothing too surprising here, and not particularly newsworthy either. But overlooked, as best I can tell, was Carter’s interview the other night with Larry King, which prompted this exchange about Iran and North Korea:
KING: And you believe diplomacy [in Iran] can work? CARTER: Yes, I do. As a matter of fact, when the shah was overthrown, I had continued as you know full diplomatic relations with Iran. Everybody knows that because I had 75 or so diplomats in Tehran. I had about the same number of Washington when we had communications going on. I think when we disagree with somebody with a serious confrontation, like we are now building up with Iran, the best thing to do is try to ease the tension by just explaining our position directly to them, let them explain theirs to us and working out a reasonable compromise. That should be done. And that’s been the policy of our country almost since the founding of our nation. KING: Is that your number one worry spot in the world? CARTER: Well, North Korea still bothers me. Because after we had negotiated with North Korea in 1994, a reasonable end to their nuclear capability and after President Bill Clinton adopted what we had negotiated and put that into effect, it was thrown away when the new administration came in. And after that, North Korea began to purify plutonium and now they have enough for six or seven nuclear weapons. I think that potentially is much worse to disrupt the region of the world which might involve us than Iran, which now has no capability at all, everybody agrees, for nuclear weapons in the near future.
Again, I’m hardly surprised that Carter would make the ridiculous claim that the Bush administration is to blame for the collapse of the agreed framework, but does the former president not remember what happened to those “75 or so” diplomats he left in Tehran?
