The Baker report, edited in November 2006 (but copied from a previous report that was written in 2004 by Brzezinski and Gates), claimed in its introduction : “The policies and acts of the neighboring countries of Iraq affect greatly its stability and prosperity. On long term, none of the countries of the region would benefit from an Iraq that is thrown into chaos. However the neighbors of Iraq don’t act sufficiently to help Iraq to reach stability. Some even act in a way to destabilize it. The United States should launch immediately a new diplomatic offensive that would aim to build an international consensus for the stability of Iraq and its region.

Considering the ability of Syria and Iran to carry weight on the event course inside Iraq and their interest to not let the chaos settling there, the United States should start to initiate a dialogue with those both countries.”

Actually the Baker report was a tool to allow the Bush administration to keep some distance in relation to its own sterile accusations against the mullahs. Teheran didn’t take the line that was thrown to escape from this dead-end and Bush officially buried this report. However he started to apply the recommendations of the Baker report by establishing direct negotiations with the mullahs for Iraq’s stability. But he always carried on combining such dialogue with accusations whose objective was to mention military retaliation in order to scare and incite the mullahs to show to be more cooperative.

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The nomination of Panetta is inscribed in the policy advocated by Obama and Brzezinski in which references to retaliation give place to some more diplomatic speech in order to allow the implementation of a strategy of direct and pre-condition free negotiation. Such a strategy is very destabilizing for Teheran.

Indeed when the mullahs’ regime was facing the intransigence of Bush, it used to ask for such negotiations being sure that Bush would refuse. This was a trick to avoid dialogue and carry on the terrorist confrontation on the Iraqi ground. Teheran was using such confrontations in order to make its American adversary give way as this one was dependent on a public opinion that was saddened by the number of person killed. By granting direct, immediate and pre-condition free negotiations, the Obama team thinks that it found the way to stop the fiddles of the mullahs. Thus the objective of Obama will be to avoid anything that could make Teheran play its game. If need be, he will have to provide a report from the CIA that would state the positive role of the mullahs in Iraq in order to recommend a dialogue with Teheran as it was done so by the Baker-Hamilton report or the Gates-Brzezinski one.

This won’t be an unheard situation. In November 2007, the CIA, then lead by Micheal Hyden, provided a report on the Iranian nuclear activities, a report (NIE) that was minimizing the Iranian nuclear threat. It allowed Bush to stop an escalation that became unavoidable due to the succession of his own accusations against Iran. Afterwards the CIA maintained this statement by going against the conclusions of the AEIA in order to allow Bush to reach an understanding with Teheran. Therefore we can argue that the head of the CIA is changing but not its course of action that is to provide the US president with the tools that are necessary for the application of his doctrine.

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The french version of this article :
 Iran : Le nouveau chef de la CIA appartient à la commission Baker
 (7 JANVIER 2009)