To Talk With Iran, Stop Not Talking
By James Dobbins
WashPost
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
President Obama has been clear that the United States should talk to Iran. The Iranian regime has indicated on a number of occasions that it was ready to talk to Washington, though it has often accompanied its offers with disobliging statements or limiting conditions. The Obama team is reportedly debating whether it should wait until after the Iranian presidential election in June to launch such a dialogue, both to avoid boosting President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's candidacy and in the hope that by waiting it might end up dealing with Mohammad Khatami, the more moderate former president who recently announced that he would seek office again. But a strong argument against such a delay is the Iranian nuclear program, which continues to move forward. If the dominant imperative is to stop Iran from getting the bomb, every month counts.
Perhaps the simplest -- and certainly the quickest -- way to launch a dialogue with Iran, and the one least likely to play unhelpfully into the upcoming Iranian election, would be to simply stop not talking to Tehran. For nearly 30 years, American diplomats have been limited as to when and where they could speak to their Iranian counterparts. The president could authorize Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to lift this ban. It's that simple: Whether the diplomat is Obama's ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice; special envoy Richard Holbrooke, on a visit to Kabul or Islamabad; former assistant secretary of state Christopher Hill when he gets to Baghdad to replace Ambassador Ryan Crocker; or other U.S. diplomats, all would henceforth be free to engage Iranians as they do representatives of other countries with which the United States has troubled relations.
In this scenario, each American would operate within the limits of his or her existing instructions and responsibilities, as would the Iranians with whom he or she spoke. This is not a formula for negotiating a "grand bargain" addressing all the grievances of both sides or meeting all of each side's needs. Contacts of this limited nature would be unlikely to produce near-term breakthroughs. Eventually, if real progress is to be made, each side would need to establish a privileged, confidential channel through which all issues of interest to both governments could be put on the table. It would be a lot easier to set up and maintain that kind of channel if the principle of direct contacts were established and the practice routine.
(More here.)
WashPost
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
President Obama has been clear that the United States should talk to Iran. The Iranian regime has indicated on a number of occasions that it was ready to talk to Washington, though it has often accompanied its offers with disobliging statements or limiting conditions. The Obama team is reportedly debating whether it should wait until after the Iranian presidential election in June to launch such a dialogue, both to avoid boosting President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's candidacy and in the hope that by waiting it might end up dealing with Mohammad Khatami, the more moderate former president who recently announced that he would seek office again. But a strong argument against such a delay is the Iranian nuclear program, which continues to move forward. If the dominant imperative is to stop Iran from getting the bomb, every month counts.
Perhaps the simplest -- and certainly the quickest -- way to launch a dialogue with Iran, and the one least likely to play unhelpfully into the upcoming Iranian election, would be to simply stop not talking to Tehran. For nearly 30 years, American diplomats have been limited as to when and where they could speak to their Iranian counterparts. The president could authorize Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to lift this ban. It's that simple: Whether the diplomat is Obama's ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice; special envoy Richard Holbrooke, on a visit to Kabul or Islamabad; former assistant secretary of state Christopher Hill when he gets to Baghdad to replace Ambassador Ryan Crocker; or other U.S. diplomats, all would henceforth be free to engage Iranians as they do representatives of other countries with which the United States has troubled relations.
In this scenario, each American would operate within the limits of his or her existing instructions and responsibilities, as would the Iranians with whom he or she spoke. This is not a formula for negotiating a "grand bargain" addressing all the grievances of both sides or meeting all of each side's needs. Contacts of this limited nature would be unlikely to produce near-term breakthroughs. Eventually, if real progress is to be made, each side would need to establish a privileged, confidential channel through which all issues of interest to both governments could be put on the table. It would be a lot easier to set up and maintain that kind of channel if the principle of direct contacts were established and the practice routine.
(More here.)
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