Iran rounded up hundreds of Arabs to help the US counter al-Qaeda after the Sept. 11, 2001, attack after they crossed the border from Afghanistan, a former official of the administration of US President George W. Bush said on Tuesday. Many were expelled, Hillary Mann Leverett said, and the Iranians made copies of almost 300 of their passports.
The copies were sent to Kofi Annan, then the secretary-general of the UN, who passed them to the US, and US interrogators were given a chance by Iran to question some of the detainees, Leverett said.
Leverett, who was a career US Foreign Service officer, said she negotiated with Iran for the Bush administration in the 2001-2003 period, and that Iran sought a broader relationship with the US.
“They thought they had been helpful on al-Qaeda, and they were,” she said.
For one thing, she said, Iran denied sanctuary to suspected al-Qaeda operatives.
Some administration officials took the view, however, that Iran had not acknowledged all likely al-Qaeda members nor provided access to them, Leverett said.
Many of the expelled Arabs were deported to Saudi Arabia and other Arab and Muslim countries, even though Iran had poor relations with the Saudi monarchy and some other countries in the region, Leverett said.
James Dobbins, the Bush administration’s chief negotiator on Afghanistan in late 2001, said Iran was “comprehensively helpful” in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attack in working to overthrow Taliban rule and collaborating with the US to install a new government in Kabul.
Iranian diplomats made clear at the time they were looking for broader cooperation with the US, but the Bush administration was not interested, said the author of After the Taliban: Nation-Building in Afghanistan.
The Bush administration has acknowledged contacts with Iran over the years even while denouncing Iran as part of an “axis of evil” and declining to consider resumption of diplomatic relations.
“It isn’t something that is talked about,” Leverett said in describing Iran’s role during a forum at the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan policy institute.
Leverett and her husband, Flynt Leverett, a former career CIA analyst and a former National Security Council official, jointly proposed that the US president who replaces George W. Bush in January seek a “grand bargain” with Iran to settle all major outstanding differences.
“The next president needs to reorient US policy toward Iran as fundamentally as President Nixon did with China in the 1970s,” Flynt Leverett said.
Among provisions of the Leveretts’ recommended Iran policy: The US would clarify that it is not seeking change in the nature of Iran’s Islamic government but rather its policies, while Iran would agree to “certain limits” on its nuclear program.
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