In retrospect, none of these goals seems to have been achieved to the satisfaction of the Administration as they are based on obliviousness to the realities in the region. As Mark A. Heller, a national security specialist at Tel Aviv University suggested, it would have been best for President Bush to cancel his appointments with the Arab states and fly directly to Tehran. He would have then had a better chance to bring the Israelis and the Palestine together, provide better security to allies, and see for himself that Iran was not after all a dangerous nation. It may not still be too late for the President to at least express a desire for such a trip. It is very possible that Iran will agree to it. Unless it is tried, we will never know.
While the US is a global power and Iran must acknowledge this fact, the US needs to also recognize that Iran is the natural regional superpower in terms of territory, population and economic resources. The country enjoys vast soft powers amongst the vast majority of people in region, and maintains strong economic, cultural and religious ties with its neighbors. Isolating Iran in the current globalized and high energy demanding world is a lofty hallucination. Although Arab states might consider the current Iranian regime a threat, they strongly oppose another US war in their backyard. The attempt for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in order to build a coalition of Arab-Israeli opposition against the alleged Iranian expansion will ultimately fail.

The entire world currently holds the security in the Persian Gulf as a matter of vital interest. Even more, disregard for Iran and its current standing is clearly in opposition to American interest. There is a strong necessity for engagement and compromise by both sides. By doing so, many matters can be efficiently addressed and resolved. Security of the Persian Gulf cannot be sustained without full cooperation from the Persian states, including Iran, and the United States. Israeli security and a resolution to the Palestinian cause can surely be expedited and assisted by a new dynamic of positive Iranian pressure. In fact, many Middle East experts consider disregard for Iranian authority in Israeli-Palestinian talks as the reason for repeated failures and lack of concrete results

Engagement between Iran and the United States and acknowledgment of the realities that govern the region will bring a constructive transformation with respect to Iraq and Afghanistan, Persian Gulf security, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and even remaining questions about Iran's nuclear energy program. What is needed is a compromise by both sides for an all out negotiation without preconditions. Questioning whether the chicken or the egg came first is no longer of relative importance; it's the present state of being and the course for the future that must be considered. Procedural matters can no longer be allowed to stand destructively in the way of an honest and urgent US-Iran engagement.