Talking with Iran, belatedly

The announcement that the U.S. ambassador to Iraq will meet with his Iranian counterpart in Baghdad is a textbook case of better late than never. Now that the United States and Iran have at last agreed to begin a dialogue that suits the vital interests of both, the pragmatists in both camps must prevent hard-liners from sabotaging the enterprise.

Because the Bush administration waited so long to open talks with Iran - a move recommended last year by the Iraq Study Group - the American position in Iraq has weakened appreciably while Iran's has been strengthened. Four years ago, Bush spurned a proposal from a reformist government in Iran for a so-called grand bargain on Iraq, Iran's nuclear program, its support for Hezbollah, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and a U.S. agreement not to pursue regime change in Tehran.

At the time, the balance of power looked very different. American forces had removed Iran's two principal regional enemies: the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. For its part, Iran not only helped U.S. diplomats form a post-Taliban government in Afghanistan in late 2001; the Iranians had also provided intelligence assistance for the military overthrow of the Taliban.

A couple of months later, President George W. Bush included Iran in his rhetorical axis of evil.

Bush's blunders in Iraq after his rejection of the May 2003 offer from Iran opened the way first to the Sunni Arab insurgency and then to sectarian warfare between Sunnis and Shiites. These calamities, along with the election in 2005 of hard-liner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as Iran's president, the progress of Iran's nuclear program, and Bush's dilatory response to the war last summer between Israel and Hezbollah, tilted the leverage away from Washington and toward Tehran.

But Iran's hard-liners have also overplayed their hand. Their transparent lies about their nuclear program, their support for the Shiite militias killing Sunni Arabs in Iraq, and their growing role in Lebanon and Gaza have frightened Arab governments in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt.

Those states and their intelligence agencies are cooperating with Washington in a sub-rosa campaign to contain or roll back Iran's regional influence.

So Iran has powerful incentives to cooperate in seeking to end the sectarian slaughters in Iraq and bring about a modicum of political stability there. Both sides want to avoid the sort of chaos that could eventually draw Iraq's neighbors into the maelstrom.

Bush should approach talks with Iran with an understanding that the two sides share significant interests in Iraq, that there will have to be a quid pro quo for concessions that either party makes to the other, and that striking a deal with Iran could be as beneficial to American interests as the deals other presidents struck with the Soviet Union or Maoist China.