http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-01-22/hes-already-talking-to-iran/He's Already Talking to Iran
by Geraldine Brooks
Even at his inauguration, Obama was making subtle appeals to the rising dissent in Iran. Author and longtime Mideast correspondent Geraldine Brooks on the huge dividends that could come from finally opening a dialogue there.
Barack Obama has said he is prepared to talk to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. At his inauguration, he did something better. He began to talk past him, directly to the Iranian people, who will elect their own new president later this year.
Obama’s middle name, Hussein, is familiar and recognizable to all Muslims, but for Iran’s Shiites it is especially beloved. It is the name of the martyred son of their venerated Imam Ali, invoked at their most sacred festivals, blazoned on religious gathering places, chanted by weeping mourners at the times of their personal loss. How confounding that the leader of the nation so long excoriated as the Great Satan should choose to be sworn into office using the name of a Shiite saint.
Obama undoubtedly understands this. At a campaign fundraiser on a summer evening a year and a half ago, the then-underdog candidate Obama gave a short speech in answer to a question on Iran that showed him to be exquisitely aware of Iranian history and sensitivities. In it, he reflected that it might not be a bad thing, in talking to Iran, to acknowledge that America’s role in the coup that unseated the democratically elected leader Mossadegh in 1953 was a mistake, as was our clandestine support for Saddam Hussein while he bombed Iranian cities such as Khoramshah to rubble in 1988. If he were to make a similar speech to the Iranian people, there’s a chance that the Ahmadinejad era of terrorism-supporting, holocaust-denying, nuclear-proliferating fanaticism could soon be behind us.
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If we don’t hear much about all this it is probably because no US diplomats have set foot in Iran since the embassy siege in 1979. Instead, our presence there has been a handful of special forces apparently trying to do on the ground what is better and much more safely done at the negotiating table. The last thing we need is another unnecessary war. The best way for President Obama to minimize that risk and to hasten a more moderate Iran would be to use his eloquence to reach past the sclerotic and largely unloved Iranian regime, and talk to the Iranians, respectfully and directly. The rewards of success would be high: cooperation in Iraq, a dialing down of support for Hezbollah and Hamas, a reinvigorated nonproliferation policy, and ultimately, perhaps, a real friend in place of an implacable foe.
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