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Copyright © 1999, by the Middle East Data Project, Inc. All rights reserved.
When a senior Clinton administration official announces the intention to make a major policy speech these days, there is ample cause for concern. Chances are troops are about to deploy (as peacekeepers), new sanctions threatened; or some stunning gesture of appeasement (as with North Korea) is about to be unveiled.
Assistant Secretary Martin Indyk's October 14 appearance before the Asia Society in Washington, DC was worrisome on several counts. Indyk is widely credited as the author of the administration's "dual containment" policy - a policy that has failed in Iraq but has succeeded in preventing major U.S. embarrassment in Iran by forbidding until recently any commercial dealing with the Islamic Republic.
[...]
Indyk's speech disappointed the appeasers, since he complained of Iran's "hide-bound and unimaginative" response to U.S. gestures of friendship and dialogue. And for the first time, he offered timid U.S. support for Iranian democrats seeking to replace the clerical regime with a more representative system and government.
Billed as "Prospects for a New Relationship", Indyk's speech made a coherent argument for maintaining the current U.S. containment policy toward Iran until the Tehran regime takes serious steps to scale back its WMD program and cease its support for terrorist groups opposing the Middle East peace process.
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