Iran: Really ready to negotiate?

The dance between the Obama administration and Iran has begun, said Borzou Daragahi in the Los Angeles Times. During his campaign, Barack Obama promised to reach out to Iran, and at a news conference this week, he said he “will be looking for openings” with Iran that “will allow us to move our policy” in a new direction. The next day, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that he would “welcome genuine changes” in U.S. policy, especially if Obama is serious about treating Iran with respect. “The Iranian nation,” Ahmadinejad said, “is prepared to talk.” If the two nations do meet at a negotiating table, said Trudy Rubin in The Philadelphia Inquirer, Iran’s uranium-enrichment program will be a central topic, since the U.S. remains convinced that its ultimate goal is a nuclear bomb. Would Tehran really surrender its nuclear program—and its Great Satan ideology—for greater involvement with the U.S. and the world community?

It just might, said Michael Ledeen in The Wall Street Journal. Heading into its contentious presidential election in June, Iran is not in a position of strength. The plunge in oil prices has rocked its weak economy, and many Iranians regard the theocratic regime with contempt. Iranians have also seen what conflict and war have done to Iraq and Afghanistan, said Roger Cohen in The New York Times. On the streets of Tehran, people say they want “money, education, and opportunity,” not a violent ideological conflict with the U.S. “Who needs that?” they say. A genuine outreach by Obama, not accompanied by demands that the uranium enrichment cease immediately, would be “shrewd.” If Iranians are given an alternative to their current desperation that preserves “Persian pride,” who knows? They just might take it.

We’ve heard all this before, said Michael Rubin in The Weekly Standard. To know how this latest gambit will play out, just retrace the path of Jimmy Carter. He made similar overtures to Iran’s mullahs—and they made a monkey out of him, and took 52 Americans hostage. After 30 years in power, Iran’s leaders are more intractable than ever, and they will respond to “every feeler” from Obama with ever “more intrusive demands.” Indeed, nothing would better serve their propaganda than an “outstretched hand” from a naïve U.S. president. If Obama thinks the problem with Iran originated with his predecessor in the White House—instead of in Tehran—he will surely get “burned.”

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