A start to an Iran-U.S. thaw

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki ended up boycotting an anticipated dinner meeting Thursday with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, scuttling hopes of a major diplomatic breakthrough during the summit in Egypt. But there were encouraging reports that ambassadors from the two countries met Friday and laid the groundwork for future meetings on the Iraq war and other topics.
It’s good that the Bush administration seems at least open to the idea of talks with Iran and Syria. As many U.S. military leaders have said, the war in Iraq won’t be won by the military. It requires political and diplomatic solutions.
Posted by Randy Scholfield

3 Comments

  1. thinkfirst
    Posted May 6, 2007 at 6:26 am | Permalink

    When the Iranian Foreign Minister stands up Connie Rice for dinner, how can that be called a ‘thaw’? The Bush spin-masters are working overtime on this one. Remember, Bush was opposed to talking to Iran or Syria about the Iraq war.Well now, they won’t talk to him. Sure, the low level people will ‘meet and greet’, but if the big dogs don’t talk, nothing will happen. By the way, the big dogs aren’t talking.

  2. Kev
    Posted May 6, 2007 at 8:17 am | Permalink

    The old saying: If you can’t beat your enemies, join them! It looks like we are finally coming to the realization that Iran is going to be a regional power in that area now and that Iran is going to be a nuclear power as well. We might not like it but there is not much we can do about it. So the best thing for us to do is to try to co-opt them much as we did China and Russia which also used to be our enemies.

  3. Kev
    Posted May 6, 2007 at 8:21 am | Permalink

    “When the Iranian Foreign Minister stands up Connie Rice for dinner, how can that be called a ‘thaw’? ”

    What happened was this: they told the Minister that he was MEETING Condi RICE for DINNER in hopes of THAWING relations but the interperter stated “you are having meat and candy rice for dinner unthawed” and the Minister decided that did not sound appetizing to him so he skipped out. All a big misunderstanding you know!