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The answer suggested by our conversations is that Iran does want to work out a modus vivendi with the United States—but will play hard-to-get.
Obama will be in a strong bargaining position if he sticks to his pledge to withdraw U.S. combat troops from Iraq over 16 months and also removes U.S. bombers from air bases there. In return, he could demand that Iran prevent the Iraqi Shiite militias it supports from harassing U.S. forces during the pullout, and help in rooting out Al Qaeda from Iraq—a goal Tehran shares with Washington.
To start a broader dialogue on the nuclear issue, Obama would have to take one crucial step sought by Iran: end CIA and Special Forces support for insurgents seeking to overthrow the Islamic republic, especially Kurdish separatists and the Iraq-based Mujahedin-e Khalq. This move wouldn't need to be publicly announced, however, and would thus have a low domestic political cost for Obama.
Boroujerdi, the parliamentary foreign-policy chief, said that if Washington accepted Iran's right to continue uranium enrichment for peaceful purposes, the rest of the nuclear issue would be "negotiable." "We understand and accept that the red line would be the development of a nuclear weapon," he said.
Ending the Bush administration's regime-change policy toward Iran is probably key to holding productive nuclear negotiations and would be an acceptable price to pay. But will a President Obama stand up to entrenched forces in the Pentagon, the CIA and allied intelligence services that are already engaged in covert action against Iran? That won't be easy; the next U.S. president will face tough adversaries in Washington as well as Tehran.
Harrison is director of the Iran Program at the Center for International Policy.
© 2008
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