Is it an insincere negotiating ploy to score easy goodwill, or a genuine diplomatic opportunity? That is what commentators have been debating since Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced May 31 that the United States would join multilateral talks with Iran on its nuclear program once Iran suspends disputed nuclear activities.

The announcement came on the eve of Rice's trip to Europe to nail down the details of a European Union-drafted package of incentives to get Iran to guarantee it will not make nuclear weapons, as well as sanctions if Tehran does not comply.

At its core, the plan calls for the United States to join the E-3 --Britain, France and Germany -- in talks with Iran if Tehran verifiably suspends uranium enrichment.

At this point, the best answer to the question above is both. The U.S. offer can be seen as a lemon. Issuing preconditions will likely cause Iran to issue its own, as well as deride the U.S. offer as mere "propaganda." But that doesn't mean one can't make it into lemonade.

After all, it is unambiguously a good thing that the Bush administration recognizes that only the United States has the weight to make diplomacy succeed. And there are those in Iran who are receptive to direct negotiations. Kazem Jalali, spokesman for the Iranian parliament's Foreign Policy and National Security Committee, said the U.S. move might be viewed positively in Tehran if preconditions were dropped.

And the move by the United States implicitly recognizes, contrary to right-wing scare tactics, that Iran's nuclear program is not an imminent threat. This was confirmed by Mohamed El Baradei, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), who said in a little noted speech the day before Rice's announcement that Iran does not pose an immediate nuclear threat and the world must act cautiously to avoid repeating mistakes made with Iraq and North Korea.

Furthermore, this represents an opportunity for direct dialogue between Iran and the United States, which is nothing to be dismissed. After all, nearly 30 years after the 1979 revolution, we need to consider what the policy of no official U.S. dialogue with Iran has achieved in terms of influencing Iranian behavior. In a word: nothing.

Iran is still on the State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism, and continues to play an unconstructive role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. If the U.S. government were a private company marketing communication techniques, such results would have long ago resulted in somebody on the top floor being replaced.

Remember the May 8 letter sent by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to U.S. President George W. Bush? The fact that Bush declined to answer the document resulted in a public relations victory for the Iranians. What people remember is that the Iranian president sent the American president a letter and the American president did not reply.

Plus, the United States has nothing to lose by seriously trying direct diplomacy. The costs of failed diplomacy are infinitely lower than those of a military attack. And truthfully, nobody has a better alternative.

The central question is this: If the United States has direct discussions with Iran, will Iran suspend its nuclear enrichment program?

There is reason to think so. In January, Iran made an offer to the Europeans to suspend its enrichment program. But that proposal was dismissed by the E-3 because back then, they had already made an agreement for the United States to refer the issue to the Security Council. From their perspective, it was too little too late, but it did show that the Iranians are willing to suspend enrichment if they can get something in return.

Movement on Negotiations

The important thing to bear in mind is that in real negotiations, both sides have to offer something. The United States officially wants Iran to totally abandon enriching uranium. This is at odds with Iran's insistence that the United States acknowledge its right to enrich uranium, per the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which allows the use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.

If the United States were to stick to its current position, nothing would happen. But as the days since Rice made her announcement show, direct negotiations offer the promise of a solution. Already, according to news reports, the United States has put forward a revised proposal to Iran that reaffirms its inalienable right to nuclear energy for peaceful purposes in line with the NPT.

The proposal also allows for the construction of new light-water reactors within the framework of the IAEA while Iran suspends all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities during negotiations, and the proposal would resume implementation of the IAEA Additional Protocol.

In short, direct negotiations with Iran are a win-win situation for the United States. The Bush administration can justifiably say to other countries, "we are not closed-minded, saber-rattling unilateralists bent on going to war." More importantly, it creates maneuvering room that wasn't there previously.

The important thing now is to ensure that negotiations continue and that hardliners in both countries are relegated to the sidelines. For, as Winston Churchill famously said, "To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war."

David Isenberg is a senior research analyst at the British American Security Information Council, a member of the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy, and an adviser to the Straus Military Reform Project of the Center for Defense Information, Washington. These views are his own.

This article was originally published in Defense News, July 17, 2006, and is posted here by permission of the author.