Clintonistas frolicking with the Mad Mullahs?

This strikes me as very peculiar. I sure hope this isn't one of those bone-headed Valerie Plame-Joe Wilson schemes the Dems love to cook up...

Senior Democrat’s Iran visit raises eyebrows
Fri. 13 Oct 2006
Iran FocusLondon, Oct. 13 - A five-day visit to Iran earlier this month by a senior Clinton administration official has fuelled rumours among Iranian political pundits that some Democratic Party leaders may be attempting to establish unofficial channels of communication with Tehran in a bid to outmanoeuvre the Bush administration in its handling of the thorny issue of Iran.

Notice they don't say who the relative was...
An Iranian Foreign Ministry official was quoted by government-controlled newspapers in Tehran on Thursday as saying that James Rubin, the chief spokesman for the State Department from 1997 to 2000, travelled to Iran recently to visit a relative of his wife, Iranian-born Christiane Amanpour, CNN’s chief international correspondent.

The Iranian official noted that Rubin had entered Iran after “receiving a visa and following legal procedures”, adding that Rubin did not meet any Iranian official during his visit. Both the announcement and the official’s request for anonymity were unusual by Iranian standards.

Iranian Bloggers rule...
The Foreign Ministry official was in fact reacting to a report that had appeared earlier this week on Baztab, a Persian-language website that belongs to Mohsen Rezai, a former Revolutionary Guards commander with close ties to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.“Baztab has learnt the James Rubin… came to Iran last week on a secret visit”, the website reported on Tuesday. “The Iranian authorities have not made any comments so far to confirm or deny this report and efforts to find out about Rubin’s meetings in Iran have come to no avail”.The website quoted the Tehran correspondent of Britain’s Sky News – where Rubin is a regular commentator – as saying that the former U.S. official visited Iran in the company of his wife and toured the cities of Tehran, Qom and Isfahan.“This was just a family visit; they didn’t meet any officials”, Siamak Zand, the Sky News correspondent, told the website Baztab.

Riddle me this batman, who the hell would go to IRAN for a damn vacation????

Coming at a time of rising tensions between President George W. Bush’s administration and Iran’s hardline-dominated government, the surprise visit has raised some eyebrows on both sides of the Atlantic.“This may have been just as innocuous as the Iranian government has portrayed it; an uneventful family visit”, said Hassan Baradaran, a writer on Iranian affairs based in Paris. “But if the Democrats wanted to send someone to Tehran just to test the waters, Rubin would have been the guy to pick”.

Baradaran noted that from Tehran’s perspective, Rubin had the right credentials; he was a senior foreign policy advisor to former President Bill Clinton and the national security adviser to Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. Both Clinton and Kerry have been vociferous in their criticism of the Bush administration’s Iran policy, advocating a more conciliatory approach to Tehran in search of a possible “grand bargain”.

Iran, and how to deal with the growing crisis generated by Tehran’s nuclear program, its role in Iraq and Lebanon and other flashpoints of the Middle East could be the most important foreign policy issue in the next presidential elections in the United States”, Baradaran said. “Iran is bound to be a big issue for any Democratic candidate in ’08, and some might be tempted to pre-position themselves”.

Preposition themselves? I call it borderline treason.

UPDATE: Mehr News picks the story up.

Just for grins here is the latest State Department Travel Advisory for Iran. Dated 10/10/06 My question: did Jamie and Christiane register their trip with the State Dept?

The Department of State continues to warn U.S. citizens to carefully consider the risks of travel to Iran. This Travel Warning supersedes the Travel Warning for Iran issued December 29, 2005.

Some elements of the Iranian regime and population remain hostile to the U.S. As a result, American citizens may be subject to harassment or arrest while traveling or residing in Iran. The Iranian regime continues to repress its minority ethnic and religious groups, including Azeris, Kurds, Bahai, ethnic Arabs and others. Consequently, some areas within the country where these minorities reside, including the Baluchistan border area near Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Kurdish northwest of the country, and areas near the Iraqi border, remain unsafe. Armed attacks on the road between Bam and Kerman this May also render this area unsafe.

Large-scale demonstrations have taken place in various regions throughout Iran over the past several years as a result of a sometimes-volatile political climate. U.S. citizens who travel to Iran despite this Travel Warning should exercise caution.

The U.S. government does not have diplomatic or consular relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran and therefore cannot provide protection or routine consular services to American citizens in Iran. The Swiss government, acting through its Embassy in Tehran, serves as protecting power for U.S. interests in Iran. Neither U.S. passports nor visas to the United States are issued in Tehran. The Iranian Government does not recognize dual citizenship and generally does not permit the Swiss to provide protective services for U.S. citizens who are also Iranian nationals. In addition, U.S. citizens of Iranian origin who are considered by Iran to be Iranian citizens have been detained and harassed by Iranian authorities. Former Muslims who have converted to other religions, as well as persons who encourage Muslims to convert, are subject to arrest and prosecution.

Americans who travel or reside in Iran despite this Travel Warning are strongly encouraged to register through the State Department's travel registration website, https://travelregistration.state.gov. If they are in Tehran, American citizens may also register in person at the U.S. Interest Section of the Swiss Embassy, located at Africa Avenue, West Farzan Street, no. 59, Tehran. The local telephone numbers are 021-8878-2964 and 021-8879-2364, fax 021-8877-3265, E-mail: vertretung@tie.rep.admin.ch .


About Ms. Amanpour's Iranian relatives. According to the couple's NY TIMES wedding announcement it appears not to have been her parents.

"Ms. Amanpour, who is keeping her name, is a daughter of Patricia and Mohammad Amanpour of Surrey, England. Her father is a retired airline executive who worked in Teheran, Iran."

More from Wikipedia - it doesn't sound like the Amanpours left Iran under the best circumstances, which beggars the question, why are they going back now?
Shortly after her birth in London, her mother Patricia and father Mohammed, an Iranian airline executive, moved the family to Tehran. The Amanpours led a privileged life under the regime of the Shah of Iran. At age 11, she returned to England to attend first the Holy Cross Convent School in Buckinghamshire, England, and then the New Hall School, an exclusive Roman Catholic girls' school. Her family had to flee Iran after the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Christiane moved to the United States to study journalism at the University of Rhode Island.

The happy power couple found time before their trip for an intimate tete a tete with Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta Jones. Glamour, glamour, glamour! More glamour here as Christiane teams up with the likes of Katie Couric and Susan Sarandon as presenters of the International Emmys!!!! More awards to be presented here!!

Back in the day Jamie was advisor to the Kerry campaign. Here he waxes eloquent about John Kerry and Iran:

One of the things the 9/11 commission has thrown up is the question of Iran. US-Iranian policy has been in the deep freeze for 25 years. How is that going to change with John Kerry?

I know John Kerry regards an Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism armed with nuclear weapons as unacceptable. When it comes to that primary issue he has a multiple part strategy that is much more realistic than the Bush administration’s. One is to rejoin and work through the international legal framework on arms control that will give greater force to the major powers if they have to deal with violators of that framework. Secondly, he has laid out, I think in the most comprehensive way in modern memory a candidate has ever done, a program to secure nuclear materials around the world--particularly in the former Soviet Union, but also in the places where research reactors have existed that could be susceptible to proliferation--to try to prevent Iran from ever getting this material surreptitiously. Thirdly, he has proposed that rather than letting the British, the French and the Germans do this themselves, that we together call the bluff of the Iranian government, which claims that its only need is energy. And say to them: ‘Fine, we will provide you the fuel that you need if Russia fails to provide it.’ Participating in that diplomatic initiative makes it more likely to succeed than where you have this sort of U.S. half backing for the European initiative.