Prospects for Iran-US Negotiations

Ali Asghar Kazemi

April 9, 2009

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Barrack Obama’s Nowruz message to Iranians and leaders of the Islamic regime leaves the impression that the new US president intends to demonstrate that he is sincere to put into action his presidential campaign promises with respect to Iran. He had pledged to open direct talks with Iran for the purpose of alleviating the mutual misperceptions accumulated during the past 30 years with the purpose of paving the path for normalization of relations through diplomacy. While the Iranian supreme leader did not reject categorically the offer in response, he nonetheless used harsh words to criticize the United States past policies and advised the new president to take real actions in order to prove his good intentions.

Assuming that the two parties are indeed ready to engage into some sort of talks and negotiations, before this could materialized two important questions should be clarified: first, how to negotiate; and second, what to negotiate? It seems that without resolving these essential problems any ushering of the talks would be doomed to failure. This short comment shall try to discuss briefly the matter as preliminary thoughts on the point. More