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Analysis: Will U.S., Iran eat dessert together?

By Elise Labott
CNN

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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- This weekend in Baghdad, Iraq's neighbors and members of the U.N. Security Council will meet to discuss how the international community can help the Iraqi government stop violence, build its economy and create a political process that can reverse its free-fall into civil war.

But the subplot of whether U.S. delegates will meet directly with their Iranian counterparts and end decades of talking through third parties has become at least as intriguing as the conference itself.

The American delegation is led by the outgoing ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, and David Satterfield, the State Department's Iraq coordinator.

Satterfield recently told reporters that if the Syrians or Iranians approached him and Khalilzad over orange juice to discuss the stability of Iraq, they wouldn't walk away. He said the same goes if that overture was made over dessert.

This coy diplomatic dance between the United States and Iran has, in the minds of many foreign policy experts, become akin to a pair of high school girls waiting to be asked to the prom. Both see the benefit and want to do it, but are afraid of being burned. (Read what one Iran official told CNN's Christiane Amanpour about having the U.S. as an ally)

Foreign policy heavyweights from both sides of the aisle, including several former secretaries of state and national security advisers, said this approach is immature. That given the gravity of the situation in Iraq, the United States no longer has the luxury of sitting in an ivory tower waiting for the perfect conditions to talk to Iran.

It seems like many in the administration are coming around to that line of thinking, and now believe the conditions are ripe.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said this week that recent U.S. actions toward Iran -- deploying a pair of aircraft carriers to the Persian Gulf, presenting evidence that Iran is providing weapons to militias and insurgents in Iraq, detaining several Iranian agents in Iraq and tightening the financial stranglehold on Iran -- have strengthened Washington's hand enough to sit at the table with Iran.

U.S.: Stable Iraq is in Iran's interest

But any discussion, the United States says, would be confined to what's going on in Iraq. U.S. officials have told CNN that in recent protests sent to the Iranian government through the Swiss -- the primary interlocutor between Washington and Tehran -- the Bush administration has renewed an offer made in late 2005 to directly discuss Iraq and U.S. concerns about Iranian behavior.

For Iran, such narrowly focused discussions haven't borne much fruit.

By all accounts, Tehran played a useful role in 2001 in Afghanistan with the fall of the Taliban. Yet Iranian officials gripe they were rewarded in early 2002 by President Bush dubbing them as part of the "Axis of Evil" in his State of the Union address.

The United States argues that a stable Iraq is in Iran's interests. But Iran has seen the chaos in Iraq as a leverage point against the United States, even as Tehran faces another set of sanctions for refusing to end its nuclear program.

Furthermore, Iran's influence in the region has grown after last summer's war with Lebanon. And Iran has been accused of trying to exploit feuding between Hamas and Fatah in the Palestinian territories and Sunni-Shiite tensions in Iraq.

Iran seems in no mood to play nice without getting something in return.

The North Korea approach

A broader conversation with the United States about the bilateral relationship could tame Iran. The United States heads into the Iraq conference with the recent landmark agreement reached with North Korea through the six-party talks for Pyongyang to end its nuclear program.

Can this be the model for dealing with Iran? That's a question many are asking heading into the talks.

Satterfield told reporters that Iran and Syria will now be forced to defend their behavior in Iraq. He called this conference a "new and useful format" that could provide a "different kind of conversation."

Maybe so, but what Damascus and Tehran want most is to talk directly with the United States.

That's just what North Korea wanted, but it had to go through the whole process of meeting with China, South Korea, Japan and Russia just to get those precious one-on-one sessions with the United States.

Nobody thinks Saturday's conference will produce a breakthrough between the United States and Iran, even if Satterfield and Khalilzad do end up sharing a glass of orange juice or a piece of cake with their Iranian colleagues.

But it does break the ice for a ministerial meeting planned for next month, when Rice will be at the table with Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said even Rice wouldn't walk away from a possible conversation with her counterpart on the situation in Iraq. If talks this weekend go well, maybe Rice and Mottaki could move beyond a beverage and share a whole meal.

Illinois may get Gitmo detainees Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn and Sen. Richard Durbin will go to the White House Tuesday to discuss using an Illinois prison to house detainees from Guantanamo Bay.

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