Six weeks before Iran’s descent into electoral chaos, the hardline Iranian cleric Ahmad Khatami rebuked the United States in his Friday sermon, stating, “You do not want talks!”
Ayatollah Khatami (no relation to former president Mohammad Khatami) is clearly not a keen observer of the Washington scene. Given the persistence of American efforts to engage the Iranian regime in dialogue over the last 30 years, and the resilience of the Obama administration’s own commitment to engagement, the one constant in American policy toward Iran seems to be that we do indeed want talks.
Hence, as the violence has subsided, attention has turned to whether President Obama still intends to talk to Iran, and if so how.
But this question misses the point. It is a bit like me wondering whether I should invite Angelina Jolie over for dinner: The question isn’t really whether I should ask, but how on earth I would get her show up. When it comes to Iran, the question isn’t so much whether to engage, but how to get Iran’s leaders to want to engage earnestly with us.
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