By David Ignatius
Friday, July 9, 2004

Whoever wins this November's presidential election, the United States faces an urgent question that the Bush administration has not resolved: What is America's strategy for coping with the rising power of Iran?

Washington and Tehran have had extensive secret contacts since Sept. 11 -- premised on their shared goal of destroying al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Despite many meetings, nothing has come of the contacts -- partly because the Bush administration, not for the first time, was internally divided over the right strategic course.

What's poignant about these wary U.S.-Iranian feelers is that just over a year ago, they yielded a plan for an "anti-terrorist" deal that both countries should have loved: Iran would hand over some senior al Qaeda operatives in its custody and the United States would transfer to Iran some prisoners it was holding from the Iraqi-backed Mujaheddin-e Khalq organization, a group America has officially branded as terrorist.