Let the Bargaining with Iran Begin

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Iraqi Shiite men carry Iraqi flags during an anti-U.S protest called by firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr to mark the fourth anniversary of the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime on April 9, 2007 in the holy Shiite city of Najaf.

Wathiq Khuzaie / Getty

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The first conversation has to be about Iraqi militant Shi'a leader Muqtada al-Sadr. On Friday, he called on his followers to stop fighting Sunnis and focus their attacks instead on Americans. By Monday Sadr's loyalists filled Najaf's streets, closing down the city. It was the largest demonstration since the beginning of the war. And Sadr wasn't even there to rally the loyalists.

Official American military counts put the number of Sadr demonstrators at 5,000 to 7,000. The Najaf police chief estimated there were a half a million. The American press, which wasn't invited, compromised at tens of thousands, however many that is.

The actual figure doesn't really matter, because the point is Sadr proved he is not a spent force. The Administration had wanted us to believe it defeated Sadr in 2004, driving his Mahdi Army back into Sadr City. As it turns out, it was only a truce.

This should keep Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the rest of the Administration awake at night because Sadr almost certainly did not act alone in declaring a jihad against the U.S. occupation. Sadr, like most of the other Iraqi Shi'a political leaders, is beholden to Iran. He depends on it for money and arms. In return, Iran pretty much can turn him off and on when it likes.

Similarly, the military misjudged Iran when it ordered special forces to seize five members of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in the northern Iraqi city of Erbil on January 11. Their arrest was intended to force Iran to stop supporting Sadr and other violent Iraqi groups fighting American forces. Iran's reaction was slow to come, but when it grabbed the 15 British soldiers and sailors on March 23, it was clear that Iran had not been intimidated.

The story has circulated that President Ahmadinejad ordered the seizure, overplaying his hand, and that we shouldn't be overly alarmed by it. But what's missing in this narrative is that the IRGC is firmly under the control of Iran's Supreme leader Ayatollah Khameini and not Ahmadinejad. In other words, it was Iran the sovereign that took the British soldiers — not an overzealous president who overstepped his authority.

And lest there be any doubt about a chastised Iran, the day Iran released its British hostages, four members of a British patrol were killed in Basra —an area generally believed to be under IRGC control.

Secretary Rice has said she is not opposed to meeting her Iranian counterpart on the margins of a foreign ministers meeting. But this venue is too little and too late. Ignoring Iran, as we have more or less done since 1979, isn't going to do the trick either. The Administration needs to admit we are up against an Iran on the march, stop flailing around, and get down to bargaining.

Baer, Time.com's intelligence columnist, is a former CIA field officer assigned to the Middle East and the author of See No Evil and, most recently, the novel Blow the House Down