OP-ED: Interest on Both Sides In U.S.-Iran Talks, By David Ignatius, April 27, 2007

Ignatius, whose sources are wide and deep, continues to make the best case for the emerging dialogue between the U.S. and Iran. It remains my great hope that Bush makes the leap of logic on Iran before his term ends, although I remain deeply suspicious of: 1) the skill sets missing in this crew to make the diplomacy work (tell me, where has the Bush administration made any serious diplomatic breakthrough happen anywhere that doesn't look like a pale, rushed, unimaginative version of what Clinton ended up pursuing a decade earlier?); 2) their real motivations (I fear the effort is cynical at best); and 3) the lack of signs elsewhere in our regional policies that they're beginning to think holistically). Instead, I tend to see only the same basic thinking of the past, just deeply tempered by the reality of the continuing tie-down in Iraq. To me, this "realism" is just neoconism-plus-postwar-Iraq--i.e., with no teeth. The imaginative thinking on financial sanctions is encouraging, but I fear it won't be decisive for reasons I've laid out recently. So while I truly hope for breakthroughs in this regard, I don't expect the level of bargaining flexibility required for this to happen in the time remaining for Bush, although--again--the worse Iraq gets the more flexible everyone gets--including us. So an open mind remains a requirement, and nobody feeds that openness better than Ignatius' continued excellent reporting on the subject. Thanks to kilngoddess for sending this.