TALKING BEATS BOMBINB

The letter from the president of Iran to President Bush offers an unexpected opportunity for a fresh diplomatic relationship between the two countries. But the Bush administration shows by words and action that it wants no diplomacy with Iran.

In an ominous echo of the runup to the invasion of Iraq and the start of a long war, the White House is lukewarm to any United Nations solution. On Wednesday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said American diplomats would wait a couple of weeks while the Europeans design an offer to the Iranians that would make clear that they have a choice that would allow them to have a civil nuclear program in exchange for giving up nuclear weapons technology.

As for direct diplomacy with Iran, the administration has ruled it out unless Iran first halts its program to enrich uranium and reprocess plutonium. But that condition presupposes Iran’s surrendering in advance on what would be the central issue of any diplomatic talks. How could the two sides discuss a matter that one side already considers settled?

A military strike to take out Iran’s nuclear plants, if successful, would only set back the nuclear program for a few years. But it also would kill masses of civilians, further inflame the entire Muslim world, throw the international oil market into turmoil, and probably solidify popular support behind the mullahs who run the present government – dealing a fatal blow to the Bush administration’s dream of regime change.

Gwynne Dyer’s column in this newspaper Tuesday makes a persuasive case that Iran probably is seeking only a “threshold” nuclear weapons capability, to deter nuclear attack by, say, Pakistan, if Sunni extremists should take power there. He notes that Japan, Brazil, Sweden and South Africa have all taken this step, perfectly legal under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. (Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s frequent threats to drive Israel into the sea, on the other hand, are ravings but they are boilerplate ravings, standard speechmaking by most Arab leaders for half a century.)

An intriguing suggestion for a possible course of diplomacy has come from the Iran Democracy Project of the conservative Hoover Institution at Stanford. The New York Times reports that the project directors propose U.S. engagement with Tehran “with just enough diplomatic relationship to create a platform to support the beleaguered reform movement in the country.” They would lift most U.S. economic sanctions, so that the Iranian government could no longer blame the sanctions for its troubles, and encourage the Iranian people to press for democratic rule.

So diplomacy remains an option, whether the Bush administration likes it or not, instead of what looks increasingly like a road to another war. Perhaps the last hope for diplomacy instead of another war lies with our elected representatives. They should stand in the way of any repetition of the hapless Iraq adventure.