US-Iranian diplomacy

I've been trying to follow the news about the diplomacy between the US and Iran - or more accurately, the lack thereof. There are good options short of war for dealing with the outstanding issues between the US and Iran, including the non-crisis over Iran's nuclear program. Iran has repeatedly shown what seems to be a willingness to negotiate seriously. But Dick Cheney, Rummy and other hardliners in the Bush administration have been resisting such negotiations, mostly successfully.

I've come across several pieces that give some very useful background. The latest is Burnt Offering: How a 2003 secret overture from Tehran might have led to a deal on Iran’s nuclear capacity - if the Bush administration hadn't rebuffed it by Gareth Porter American Prospect 06/06/06 issue (accessed 05/22/06). Porter's A Peace Denied: The United States, Vietnam, and the Paris Agreement (1975) is one of the most important studies of the diplomacy of the Vietnam War.

I recently referenced another of his articles, Reversing Policy, U.S. "Froze" Iran Talks in March Inter Press Service 05/19/06, that discusses internal administration disputes over negotiations and also the position of Germany, which has insisted on direct US negotiations with Iran. (See also Iran and U.S. Talking Again? by John Daniszewski ABC News/AP 05/22/06.)

Gary Sick, a leading American expert on Iran, also provides a good summary of the major diplomatic issues between the US and Iran dating back to 1979 in this article from 2003: Iran: Confronting Terrorism Washington Quarterly Autumn 2003.

This book, whose full text is available online at the US Army Strategic Services Institute, Getting Ready for a Nuclear-Ready Iran (Oct 2005), Henry Sokolski and Patrick Clawson, eds., includes some very hawkish essays, including a frivolous one by neocon flack Kenneth Timmerman. But it also includes as its eighth chapter "Iran Gets the Bomb - Then What?" by George Perkovich with Silvia Manzanero (starts on p. 177), which not only has some good information about Iran's diplomatic priorities but describes various ways in which Iran is particularly susceptable to political and economic pressures short of war.

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