Roguely Stated

After avoiding Secretary Rice in Egypt last week, Iran’s leaders accepted historic talks with the U.S. about Iraqi security.

… and then promptly started to sabotage them: imprisoning an Iranian-American Princeton scholar and announcing greater cooperation with North Korea.

Following Vice President Cheney’s speech on an aircraft carrier outside the UAE, Ahmadinejad spoke in Abu Dhabi, where his tone was a melange of menace, defensiveness, and “raucous anti-American[ism]”.

All of this diplomatic tussling makes Ahmadinejad look genuinely confused or entirely disingenuous.

But there is another, more hopeful interpretation: mounting international pressure on Iran to talk with the U.S. may be making some progress. The “mullahs have historically shown an unfailing ability to smell out and, when pragmatic, succumb to credible power in their foes,” as noted by Stanford’s Abbas Milani.

A tacit confederation of Iran’s Arab neighbors may constitute just this sort of “credible power.” As Cheney tours the region on a mission of rebalancing, he may hear Jordan and Egypt warning that the military option would have “grave repercussions on the region.”

But Iran may be hearing something different — “talk to America.” So as we continue to talk about talking with Iran, we should remember that quiet but credible multilateralism, more than indirect missives or visual symbolism, may finally get Tehran to come to the table.

Tags: Abbas Milani, Ahmadinejad, Air Strikes, Cheney, Esfandiari, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Rebalancing, Rice
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