Talking to Tehran
From Dr John B. Sheldon
Sir: In a better world Andrew Gilligan’s call for the United States to offer Iran a ‘grand bargain’ in order to provide a way out of the current impasse (‘Washington must talk to Tehran’, 21 January) would make sense. However, we have been here before. In 1999 the Clinton administration offered the Iranians a similar deal. According to accounts, the administration of President Khatami was willing to accept, but the proposed deal was quashed by the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khameini, who cited the real and perceived misdeeds of the United States in Iranian affairs.
Between 2001 and 2003 the USA and Iran met regularly under the auspices of the Geneva contact group at the UN in order to liaise on issues of common interest in Afghanistan and Iraq, but these talks collapsed as more senior officials from both sides became involved. Lastly, the overtures by the United States in the aftermath of the devastating Bam earthquake in December 2003 were spurned by the Iranians.
Given this track record, it seems unlikely that any grand bargain is in the offing. There are issues for both sides to resolve internally before any rapprochement can take place, and the most important is for Iran finally to transcend its troubled past and America’s part in it, rather than to use the past as a cudgel to punish a generation of Western leaders who had no part in Iran’s history.
John B. Sheldon Henley-on-Thames, Oxon
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