Why Not Talk?

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Launching negotiations, though, carries no guarantee of success. Part of the problem begins with finding the right person to talk to. Ahmadinejad is the elected President of Iran, but ultimate power in the theocratic state lies not with him but with Khamenei. Still, Ahmadinejad's nationalist statements have bolstered his popularity with many ordinary Iranians. Ahmadinejad's letter to Bush may have been less an invitation to talk than an attempt to appeal to devout Muslims around the world by mimicking the letters sent by the Prophet Muhammad to leaders during the 7th century, exhorting them to return to God.

In part because of the opacity of the Iranian regime's intentions, only a small minority of the Bush team favors direct talks. Many experts inside and outside the government believe that no matter what incentives the world offers, Iran is determined to become a nuclear power. That has raised the specter that the U.S. might take military action to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities. Although the prospect causes shudders among the U.S.'s European and Arab allies, it might prove more palatable if Washington has shown it has exhausted all diplomatic options, including direct negotiations, before resorting to military force. If the U.S. eventually has to launch a military campaign, says George Perkovich of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, "it's going to need a lot of friends in the aftermath. And if you haven't tried diplomacy in a serious way, nobody's going to stand with you. It's going to be worse than Iraq."

In the end, the one thing that may persuade the Administration to try negotiations is a determination that all the alternatives--including a military confrontation while the U.S. is still tied down in Iraq and Afghanistan--are worse. A U.S. officer says, "We are so taxed right now, we don't have the ground troops to launch an attack." A large swath of Republicans close to Bush say they realize the country does not have the stomach for another war and Bush has lost the reservoir of trust that he had going into Afghanistan and Iraq. A senior Administration official says that for now the U.S. isn't planning a dramatic shift toward conciliation. Says the official: "We just have to keep doing what we're doing and hope it takes us somewhere." But what if it leads to a place where no one wants to go?