Lost Chances in Iran
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.
The State Department is said to have favo