Negotiating with Tehran

Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute, summarizing several decades of U.S. attempts to negotiate with Iran, doubts that diplomacy will solve our problems. "What Carter, Bush the elder, Clinton, and Bush the younger learned -- but their domestic critics have not -- is that the impediment to engagement lies not in Washington but in Tehran." He cites some recent examples:

-- when Secretary of State Condi Rice offered to negotiate, Iranian President Ahmedinejad dismissed her initiative as a propaganda move;

-- when Undersecretary of State Bill Burns sat down with his Iranian counterpart, a senior Iranian military official remarked that this showed that America had no choice but to leave the Middle East "beaten and humiliated"; and

-- as a former Iranian government spokesman noted, looking back over past negotiations: "We had one overt policy, which was one of negotiation and confidence building, and a covert policy, which was continuation of the [nuclear weapons] activities."

In Rubin's view, Bush's efforts to negotiate with Tehran have been unfairly misrepresented. Most American commentators also fail to note that the Europeans have been negotiating for years with the Iranians, to no avail. Expect to see articles in the next weeks and months pointing out the difficulties of talking to Iran, articles similar to those now appearing about the difficulty of closing the Guantanamo detention center, as the media seeks to provide cover for President-elect Obama.