The Finnish facilitator will make his first visit to the Middle East in circumstances that were not anticipated when the review conference that led to his appointment concluded its deliberations in 2010.
The region is in turmoil the like of which it has never experienced before. Three leaders, Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia and Muammar Gaddafi in Libya have been forcibly removed from office. The masses in Cairo are still taking to the streets and the current military council temporary regime is uncertain as to which way to go.
The streets of Syrian major cities have been the scenes of daily bloody confrontations as the armed forces of Bashar Assad shoot to kill in a frantic effort to save the regime. Iraq is as yet unstable and with the departure of the last American active units by year's end will be left to try and work out some modicum of cooperation between the Shi'ite majority and the Sunni and Kurdish minorities.
And, apart from the nuclear issue, the Iranian leadership is locked in an internal battle royal between Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, with the Revolutionary Guards waiting in the wings to finalize a takeover of the country. On such a backdrop, forging trust will necessarily be a very long and tortuous process, and since this is a prerequisite for everything else, this must become the focal sine qua non of any facilitator.
The challenge to all sides to the disputes in the Middle East are becoming tougher and probably harder to resolve. The IAEA report this week is one further ominous indicator of how far we still have to go. And yet, all may not be lost. The powers that be in Tehran have been known at least once in the past to do a major Uturn when they realized that the alternative was a very dark one. The founder of modern-day Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, reversed his refusal to accept a cease-fire with Iraq's Saddam Hussein at the height of the eight-year Iran-Iraq War in the late '80s when SCUD missiles began raining down on Tehran.
When asked for the reason for his turnabout he is reported to have answered simply, "But this is God's will."
There has been a hidden duality in the Islamic Republic's approach to Israel. At an international gettogether last summer, the senior Iranian present, Ali Asghar Soltanieh - the Iranian official accredited to the IAEA in Vienna - denied Israel's right to exist as a state, following the traditional line of his superiors, but simultaneously demanded that Israel join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, an act that only recognized states could do.
When I challenged him on this very contradiction, he was bereft of any response to the conundrum he had created.
This does not mean that all have to do is to simply emulate the words of the John Milton, "They also serve who only stand and wait."
The Finish facilitator might take his time to impress upon his Iranian interlocutors that whatever the current conditions are, nothing whatsoever can materialize before the basis of trust is firmly created. Needless to say, trust cannot reign without mutual respect and acceptance.
This is a tough call. And yet as the crisis between Iran and the international community hurtles on, on the verge of its spinning out of control, the options of destruction and unprecedented loss of life on all sides must loom higher in the calculus of all the players.
And one last thought - Global Zero was founded on the basis of an original statement made by the four horsemen - Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, William Perry and Sum Nunn - five and more years ago when they promoted the lofty target of ultimately freeing the globe of military nuclear capacities. Not one of them is a starry-eyed day dreamer. Neither is President Barack Obama, who adopted the Global Zero agenda in the address he delivered in Prague during the first months of his presidency. In the statement made by Gen. Jones on May 28, 2010, he also said: "Just as our commitment to seek peace and security of a world free of nuclear weapons will not be reached quickly, the United States understands that a WMD nuclear-free zone in the Middle East is a long-erm goal."
The Reagan-Gorbachev meeting 25 years ago was a culmination of vigorous efforts made over a long period of time to impress upon the minds of the Russians what their true options were and what they would gain if they went along and what they might lose if they turned the other way.
So there is much to be done in the months and years to come so that in the final analysis not only Barack Obama and/or, ultimately Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, will each be able to meet Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but they will look into each other's eyes and start to tread the difficult path of cementing trust.
This will be the only way to turn the corner and walk in the footsteps of Reagan and Gorbachev, who, after leaving office, has become a patron of Global Zero. A daydream - a fantasy maybe - or maybe when gazing into the abyss, Iran will emerge saying, "This is God's will."
