Quentin Peel-01/06/2007

Quentin Peel, (Financial Times)

"Ever since the European Union's Big Three - Germany, France and the UK - launched their attempt to find a diplomatic way to dissuade Iran from going it alone on uranium enrichment, one vital piece of the jigsaw puzzle has been missing: willingness by Washington to engage directly with Tehran.

However much the EU3 might promise, they were never able to produce serious sticks as well as carrots. Only America could do that. Even more importantly, only the US government could respond to the security concerns of the Iranian regime. Without a representative of President George W. Bush at the table, the European talks were condemned to failure."

"Whether the Iranian regime will agree to the US conditions - to suspend all enrichment and reprocessing before any talks can take place - is still uncertain. Tehran may well demand further reassurances from Washington that forcible "regime change" is not the US policy. But for the first tim in many months, Ms Rice's initiative puts Tehran on the back foot."

"For its part, Iran has tried to have it both ways. On the one hand, Iranian officials point to their national insecurity, with nuclear powers surrounding them in Russia, Pakistan an Israel, as well as the US in Iraq, Afghanistan and Turkey. "Which country apart from Canada has the US on every border?" a diplomatic jokes. "Iran, of course."

On the other hand, Tehran has been confident that the US would not win the support of Russia and China for any harsh regime of sanctions. Iran has been winning the public relations battle for the support of many leading developing countries, such as South Africa and Brazil, for its right to develop its own nuclear power industry. And it knows that in both Iraq and Afghanistan, where US forces are seeking to control growing insurgency, a word from Tehran could make matters far worse, by widening the conflict to include Iran's own allies.

Against that array of diplomatic advantages, Washington has been hard-pressed to come up with any clear strategy apart from rattling the sabre of sanctions, and refusing to remove the ultimate threat of military intervention. Such gestures have made Mr Bush's European allies uncomfortable, quite apart from the other permanent members of the Security Council, Russia and China. The chances of agreement on a serious sanctions regime have always seemed slim. That is the calculation that appears finally to have persuaded Ms Rice, and President Bush, to overrule hawks in their administration and agree to talk."

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