July 18, 2008
Editorial
A Seat at the Table
We welcome the news that President Bush has decided to send one of his top diplomats to talks on Iran’s nuclear program. That is quite a change from just a few months ago when Mr. Bush denounced as appeasement any effort to talk to “terrorists and radicals.”
It is very late in the game, but we hope this means that Mr. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice are learning the lessons of seven years of failed foreign policies built almost completely on isolating (or attacking) America’s adversaries. There is little chance of solving major international problems so long as this country refuses even to have a seat at the table.
We also hope it means that Vice President Dick Cheney and his crew have given up their dangerous fantasy of bombing away Iran’s nuclear ambitions — or at least have been overruled by the president.
It has been two years since the United Nations ordered Iran to stop enriching uranium. Tehran continues to defy that order, and its scientists are getting ever closer to mastering a process that is the hardest part of building a nuclear weapon.
The United States and other major powers (Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia) have tried to use a mixture of incentives and sanctions to get Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions. But neither the rewards nor the punishments have been especially persuasive.
China and Russia, which have strong economic ties to Iran, have blocked tough sanctions, while the Bush administration has not made a credible offer of improved relations and security guarantees and had refused to sit down at the negotiating table.
Mr. Bush’s decision to send William Burns (Ms. Rice’s third in command and a well-respected former ambassador to Russia) to join the European Union’s foreign policy chief and other top diplomats in talks with Iran makes any incentives package look more credible. It also shifts the diplomatic pressure back to Tehran. And it will make it harder for Beijing and Moscow to resist imposing a new round of sanctions if Iran remains obstinate.
Washington could do even better — with the Iranian people, international opinion and possibly Iran’s leaders — if it followed up with an offer to open an interests section in Tehran.
The administration is grudgingly asserting this is a “one-time-only” deal and that Mr. Burns will not negotiate with the Iranians or hold separate meetings with them. We welcome Mr. Bush’s willingness to try diplomacy for a change. But he might do even better if he didn’t trumpet his ambivalence quite so loudly.
