The possibility of easing tension between the US and Iran

Weekend talks between the US and Iran show Bush's shift to engagement.

from the March 14, 2007 edition

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The Iranians also played a role in establishing the anti-Taliban government. The facilitator in this was Lakhdar Brahimi, the former Algerian foreign minister who successfully engineered a number of peacekeeping missions around the world on behalf of the United Nations. In a recent interview with the Los Angeles Times, Mr. Brahimi confirmed his role in setting up multilateral meetings in 1998 and 2001 that included Iranian and American representatives.

If there is now a possibility of some serious tension-relieving discussions between Iran and the US, changing events in each country may have encouraged it.

The dispatch by President Bush of two carrier forces to waters off Iran must have captured the attention of the Iranian regime. US spokesmen have been quick to deny that the US is about to make war on Iran. But Mr. Bush has become increasingly impatient with Iranian meddling in Iraq that he says includes a flow of deadly weapons used against American soldiers. When he declares he is "going to do something about it," it may have triggered memories in Tehran of the awesome American air power used against Saddam Hussein's capital.

Another development in Iran is the apparent cooling of support among the country's young and unemployed for their controversial President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. They argue that he has occupied himself with making sensational and provocative charges against the US and Israel while neglecting to fulfill election promises to improve the economy.

A further event that might suggest disillusion with Iran's direction is the defection to the US reported by British and Israeli newspapers of an important Iranian general, Ali Resa Asgari. Described as a general in the elite Revolutionary Guards and a former deputy defense minister, he is said to have played a key role in the training and development of the Iranian-backed Hizbullah organization in Lebanon. The reports add that he could provide Western intelligence agencies with critical information about Iranian weaponry and military tactics.

Meanwhile, there has clearly been a shift in the Bush administration's foreign policy away from the unilateral emphasis to multilateralism, and from confrontation to engagement. Mindful of how little time there is left in his presidency, Bush may be intent on leaving a tidier world to what he hopes will be a Republican successor.

• John Hughes, a former editor of the Monitor, is currently a professor of communications at Brigham Young University.

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