By Hooshang Amirahmadi

Note: This editorial was written a week before the Bush Administration offered to join the EU-trio in direct talks with Iran if Tehran were to suspend its uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities. The US has now joined the Europeans, offering a package of incentives and disincentives to Tehran. We believe these ideas, which Tehran is currently studying, are major steps in the right direction. However, the Big Deal idea proposed here is still a more effective approach for a breakthrough in US-Iran relations.

By Gary Sick

I start from the assumption that Rice's statement was a compromise document that was fought out over a period of weeks, perhaps months, in Washington between the warring tribes (the Washington Post in particular documents this in some detail in their front-page story today). One tribe seems to be centered in the State Department in the persons of Condoleeza Rice and Nick Burns; the other tribe is headed by VP Cheney and operates out of his black-box counter-policy staff in the White House -- a new phenomenon in the history of US foreign policy.