TOP NEGOTIATOR SAYS U.S. SHOULD TALK TO IRAN

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Contact: Jim Camp @ (614) 764-0213
jcamp@startwithno.com

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"We have all kinds of leverage," says Jim Camp

The heated debate between Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama over whether the U.S. should engage Iran in negotiations has prompted one of the leading negotiation coaches in the U.S., Jim Camp, to suggest that the U.S. has all kinds of leverage with which to bring the bellicose nation into a more productive discussion that would reduce tensions in the Middle East.

Jim Camp, the inventor of The Camp System of Negotiation and author of two books on negotiation, is an internationally recognized negotiations coach providing counsel to nations, corporations, and individuals. He is the CEO of Camp Negotiation Systems.

"The recent political squabble over President Bush's speech to the Israeli Knesset ignores a vision he has expressed many times," said Camp. In the speech, President Bush said, "We believe that democracy is the only way to ensure human rights," adding that, "The fight against terror and extremism is the defining challenge of our time."

"What caught my attention," said Camp, "and Sen. Barack Obama's campaign staff was Bush's view that, 'Some people seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them that they have been wrong all along.'" President Bush tied this to the failed negotiations with Hitler's Nazis before World War II calling such efforts a "foolish delusion." Camp points out that, at the time, it was not foolish to try to avoid war. In the 1930s America was in a distinctly isolationist mood.

Camp said, "I am not taking sides in the political campaigns of either candidate, but I would be remiss if I did not address the benefits of negotiations with a nation, any nation, that expresses enmity to the United States."

"Just as we do not truly know what the true intentions of Iran's leaders are, anyone familiar with the science of negotiation knows that such intentions can be changed, that even a nation led by men issuing all manner of bombast and belligerence is vulnerable," said Camp.

Camp noted that in mid-May the United States announced it would resume providing North Korea 500,000 metric tons of food over the next year in exchange for "substantial improvement in monitoring" the food's distribution. The decision was the result of weeks of intense negotiations. "It's worth keeping in mind that North Korea already has nuclear weapons," said Camp.

"Why," Camp asks, "is the United States essentially telling Iran it faces military action if it acquires them? Why do we assume that Iran is any more stable than Pakistan, its neighbor, which also has nuclear weapons? Iran lives in a dangerous neighborhood. It fought an eight-year war with Iraq when Saddam was in charge. How fearful is it? How fearful should it be? What do they see in us? What could they see?"

"What the candidates aren't discussing," said Camp, "are Iran's many vulnerabilities, each of which would provide any American negotiating team with considerable opportunity to change Iran's vision of what could be. Any good negotiator could have a very positive impact and influence on Iran's intensions and the future of the Middle East."

Camp noted that that "Iran is a very unpopular nation among Arabs. In a region where Persian Iran is regarded with great suspicion by many Middle East Arab nations, it can ill afford to unify them in opposition. Its support for the radical Palestinian groups, Hamas and Hezbollah, is seen by many Arabs as manipulative and a plan to gain control of the region by proxy."

Camp further noted that "Iran is seriously vulnerable in the very area most people would consider a strength in these times of high oil prices. Iran is pumping less oil daily than it did five years before the Islamic Revolution in 1979. It is in great need of foreign investment. Ironically, Iran must import gasoline."

"The opportunity exists to reduce the tensions between our two nations," said Camp. "This option can be ignored only at the peril of a military conflict. Does anyone, including the Iranian leadership - essentially the supreme council of ayatollahs - believe that Iran could survive an American attack on its nuclear facilities and national infrastructure?"

"We need to remember we negotiated with the former Soviet Union all the way through the Cold War from 1945 to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 which was followed by its collapse," said Camp. "That collapse was the result of its inability to secure hard currency because of its own failed oil and gas industry. That collapse was hastened by an ill-conceived military intervention in Afghanistan."

Negotiating with Iran would not be easy, said Camp, but the United States has much to bring to the table beyond the bluster of military action. For all the scary rhetoric of its leaders, Iran would benefit greatly from trade with the United States.

"Both candidates for president have to begin to see the opportunities and spell out the framework for negotiations, an undoubtedly long process that would continue beyond their term in office," said Camp.