SELIG HARRISON
Available for a very limited number of interviews, Harrison is director of the Asia program at the Center for International Policy and author of five books on nonproliferation and Asian affairs. He said today: “What Iran’s going to say is that they agreed to suspend their uranium enrichment before because the European Union had promised security as well as economic incentives, but the EU never delivered on the security guarantees because we [the U.S.] wouldn’t go along with it.”

Added Harrison: “I’m struck by the fact that the U.S. government doesn’t seem to understand the need for an equitable approach. Rice made the demand for a suspension of enrichment as a condition for negotiations because the administration doesn’t want a gun pointed at its head — and then she points a gun at their head by saying that ‘all options are on the table.'”
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SIMIN ROYANIAN
Royanian is co-founder of Women for Peace and Justice in Iran. She said today: “Addressing the Iranian need for security guarantees is crucial.”

ERVAND ABRAHAMIAN
Author of the article “Iran: The Next Target?” and co-author of Inventing the Axis of Evil and author of Iran Between Two Revolutions,” Abrahamian said today: “Mostly, the administration is trying to improve its image because it was looking as though Iran was willing to negotiate and the U.S. was not. So this is targeted more at the Europeans than the Iranians. If the U.S. insists that Iran must stop all nuclear activity, including peaceful activity, then that’s a non-starter for Iran and the U.S. government knows this. Iran did stop enrichment before and nothing was forthcoming from Washington; I can’t imagine that Iran would stop enrichment at this point. Still, the bottom line is whether the U.S. is willing to let Iran have a limited research enrichment program.”

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167