Why Not Talk?

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Negotiating with a regime like Iran's, however, would have drawbacks. Skeptics dismiss the sincerity of the Iranian proffers, calling them ploys to distract attention from Tehran's defiance and dilute the international community's will to confront Iran. "We have nothing to say to them," says a U.S. official deeply involved in the Iran issue. "Every demand and every incentive that we would support has already been put on the table." The official adds that by agreeing to talk to Iran, the U.S. would "absolve the international community of the responsibility to tackle this problem." Opponents of engagement further argue that opening direct talks would confer legitimacy on Iran's leaders--who, aside from their suspected desire to obtain nuclear weapons, deny Israel's right to exist, support terrorist groups and lack support among their own people. Says Michael Rubin, an Iran expert at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank: "The very act of sitting down with them recognizes them."

And yet face-to-face talks with the Islamic republic wouldn't be unprecedented. It's not as if the Americans and Iranians haven't communicated--and in some cases cooperated--in the years since the 1979 revolution and the 444-day American-hostage crisis. Presidents Reagan and Clinton each authorized direct contacts with Tehran, although with decidedly mixed results. Even the Bush Administration was engaged in an extensive dialogue with the Iranians just a few years ago. In the wake of 9/11, a State Department--led negotiating team secured Iran's cooperation--or at least its noninterference--with the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and overthrow of the Taliban.

That mild thaw ended not long after Bush labeled Iran a member of the "axis of evil," chilling relations with then President Mohammed Khatami, Ahmadinejad's reform-minded predecessor. But as late as May 2003, the two sides discussed swapping members of the Iranian exile group Mujahedin-e Khalq (M.E.K.) whom the U.S. had detained after the invasion of Iraq for al-Qaeda prisoners held by Iran. But the talks ended after the U.S. received intelligence suggesting Iran's complicity in a terrorist bombing in Saudi Arabia. Former officials like Flynt Leverett, who headed Middle East policy at Bush's National Security Council, say the prisoner-swap deal died in part because Administration conservatives, in the heady days after the toppling of Saddam Hussein, envisioned the M.E.K. as a potential vanguard force in an attempt to overthrow the Islamic regime in Tehran.

A former senior Bush aide is worried that the President's ideological aversion to the Iranian regime may prevent him from trying to talk the Iranians out of their nuclear ambitions. Richard Armitage, who served as Deputy Secretary of State during Bush's first term, told TIME, "It appears that the Administration thinks that dialogue equates with weakness, that we've called these regimes 'evil'--either Iran or North Korea--and therefore we won't talk to them. Some people say talking would legitimize the regimes. But we're not trying to change the regimes, and they're already legitimized in the eyes of the international community. So we ought to have enough confidence in our ability as diplomats to go eye to eye with people--even though we disagree in the strongest possible way--and come away without losing anything."