Talking to Iran?

WASHINGTON, Jan. 7 (UPI) -- Shortly before Christmas, over dinner in his palace, one of the ruling sheiks of the United Arab Emirates told this reporter he had not been at all surprised by the release of the National Intelligence Estimate that said Iran had suspended its nuclear weapons program back in 2003.

"We were warned by Rafsanjani to expect a very big, very surprising announcement out of Washington," the sheik said. "He knew it was coming."

Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, former president of Iran and chairman of the country's Assembly of Experts, also chairs the special council that mediates between the ayatollahs and the Parliament whenever there is a dispute. Derisively nicknamed "Akbar Shah" by his enemies, he is also the head of what is widely reckoned to be Iran's richest family. Born into a prosperous family of pistachio farmers, he is the link between the ayatollahs, politics and the business community.

Seen as something of a moderate by Iranian standards, Rafsanjani is believed in the Gulf states to have long maintained his own back channels to Washington -- hence his supposed advance knowledge of the NIE. Rafsanjani's son Mehdi works hard at maintaining similar connections in Europe, though he denies he received any of the $86 million bribe that France's Total group is accused of paying for gas concessions in Iran. (Total chief Christophe de Margerie was arrested last year by the French authorities investigating these allegations.)

Shortly after that dinner with the sheik, David Satterfield, Iraq coordinator and senior adviser to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, said the Iranian leadership "at the most senior levels" has been using its influence with the Shiite militias to damp down the violence. The decline in overall attacks "has to be attributed to an Iranian policy decision," Satterfield told the Washington Post.

The U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, said that Iran's decision, "should (Tehran) choose to corroborate it in a direct fashion," would make a good foundation for the imminent fourth round of talks between U.S. and Iranian officials in Baghdad. And Rice at last waved an olive branch by saying that Washington was open to better relations with Tehran if it stopped enriching uranium.

Then last week, at a meeting with students, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said that while the time was not yet ripe, there was no objection in principle to resuming diplomatic ties with the United States.

"We have never said these relations should be suspended indefinitely," he said.

The Tehran Times then ran an op-ed that considered what a resumption of normal diplomatic relations between Iran and the U.S. might mean. It read: "The U.S. Iran containment policy may need to be recast, perhaps along the lines similar to, let's say, China or Russia containment and, in turn, this would mean normal relations coinciding with power and ideological competition."

Putting all of these different signals together, which may be like adding 2 plus 2 and getting 17, Gulf state officials now suspect the ground is being prepared for a seismic shift in relations between the United States and Iran. They see the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and the prospect of instability in nuclear-armed (and Sunni-led) Pakistan as a further factor that will push Washington and Tehran into closer contact to explore their common interest in keeping the hands of the crazies away from Pakistan's arsenal.

This analysis may be wrong, but it has assumed such a life of its own among the Gulf and Arab states that President George W. Bush's eight-day Middle Eastern trip that starts this week will be closely watched for any relevant clues. Indeed, the White House has already been warned by Arab diplomats in Washington that their leaders back in the Gulf are seeking clear assurances that their security remains safe in American hands.

Bush, in his pre-trip interviews with reporters, accordingly said he would urge his Gulf allies to help keep Iran's "aggressive ambitions" in check during his tour.

"I will discuss the importance of countering the aggressive ambitions of Iran," he emphasized in his latest weekly radio address. "And I will assure them that America's commitment to the security of our friends in the region is strong and enduring."

But the Gulf states, which have lived with the Persians across the Gulf for centuries and know that they will be there for centuries more, have already been taking out a little insurance against the widely discussed prospect that "the American moment in the Middle East" may be drawing to its close. The Arab leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council for the first time invited an Iranian president, the firebrand Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to their summit in Qatar last month.

Dismissing Bush's trip as "compensation for America's failed policies in the region," Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini crowed last week, "America has not been successful in isolating Iran. We are witnessing the expansion of Iran's relations with different countries."

Indeed we are, and the most interesting expansion of all would be a public resumption of Iran's relations with the United States, possibly after Iran's parliamentary elections in March. That is what some of the best-informed Gulf officials now expect; we shall see.