Azadeh Moaveni

All sorts of things have me thinking about US-Iran relations lately. The other week I was on NPR’s Talk of the Nation discussing Ahmadinejad, and I realized (or perhaps a caller helped me realize), that because the Iranian president makes such spectacle of thumbing his nose at the US, it has become very easy to forget that as recently as 2003, it was Iran that was reaching out to the US, and it was Washington doing the nose thumbing. My friend Trita Parsi discusses all this and more in his new book called “Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States.” In particular, he explores how Iran reached out to the US in 2003, offering to talk about all the issues that irk Washington, and was rebuffed by the Bush administration, which was feeling ascendent (we’ve liberated Iraq!) and disinclined to talk to the Iranians, of all people. I’m not usually one to spend much time thinking about all the wonky antipathy shared by these two nations, but I attended a talk by Gary Sick in London that I thought captured the dynamic well. Gary noted that both sides only consider talking when they’re down (when they feel all is well, they enjoy nothing so much as telling the other to get lost), and that very rarely does it come to pass that they simultaneously are in a position, both domestically and internationally, where they feel dialogue would be of benefit. There we go. Those are my serious policy thoughts for the year.