The Obama administration is living up to its promise to talk to Iran rather than to isolate it from the international community:
In a cautious first step toward unlocking 30 years of tense relations, senior U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrooke had a brief but cordial meeting with Iran’s deputy foreign minister Tuesday at an international conference on Afghanistan.
The rare diplomatic approach was the first official face-to-face interplay between the Obama administration and the Iranian regime. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton cautioned that the talks between Holbrooke and Iranian diplomat Mehdi Akhundzadeh were promising but not “substantive.”
“They agreed to stay in touch,” Clinton said at the close of a one-day conference on Afghan security and development that was designed partly to allow the diplomatic turn with Iran.
The meeting between Holbrooke, President Barack Obama’s hand-picked Afghanistan envoy, and Akhundzadeh came on the sidelines of a session aimed at improving Afghanistan’s future prospects. Akhundzadeh pledged to help the reconstruction of its neighbor, but he criticized U.S. plans to send more troops into Afghanistan.
This is a very significant development. George W. Bush’s administration refused to talk to Iran. It didn’t negotiate with the Iranians, at least not on a high level. Holbrooke is a senior U.S. diplomat, with a good bond with both Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama.
Something tells me Israel won’t be pleased. Netanyahu said earlier today he wants to isolate Iran, to subject it to tougher sanctions and to starve it economically. If the U.S. decided to engage Iran on a diplomatical leve, however, it is unlikely to support any new sanctions.
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