The US remains determined to go after Iran's nuclear programme, and it is not interested in opening a wider dialogue with the Iranian government.
This is despite various recent developments which encouraged optimistic analysts to argue that the US Secretary of State Condolezza Rice is promoting a more pragmatic approach to Iran, in supposed opposition to the determined confrontation supported by Vice-President Dick Cheney.
The perceived signs of a Rice-Cheney split were based on several shifts in US practice: the most obvious being the May 27 diplomatic talks between Iran and the US. The talks focused on Iraq and sought common ground between the two opponents, which they found it in their shared fear of a complete breakdown of Iraq's national government.
This meant that the talks had the curious outcome that both American and Iranian governments agree that they want to preserve the Shiite-dominated government of Iraq.
But the US administration was very careful to limit these talks to dealing with Iraq and nothing else. The brief exercise of diplomacy was not the start of a major breakthrough in US-Iran relations.
Instead it was forced on a reluctant US which is desperate to find a way out of the present horror and confusion in Iraq, and found it had to talk to Iran to do this.
Possible sign
Meanwhile in Washington a further possible sign that the pragmatists were winning came with reports in the Boston Globe that a government planning group, called the Iran-Syria Policy Operations Group, ISOG, had been closed down.
ISOG had been tasked with looking into ways to destabilise the Iranian regime and it had been co-chaired by Elliott Abrams from the National Security Council, who has been considered close to Cheney and his hardline attitude.
ISOG's closure seemed to be a success for those willing to open some kind of dialogue with Iran. But when the closure was announced, it was attributed in part to the fact that ISOG had not done enough to destablise Iran, and that the group's inter-agency status had caused confusion in policymaking on Iran, which could be done better through more standard channels.
Rather than being a blow for the confrontationalists, closing the group moved thinking on Iran back into the mainstream of government.
Any talk of splits in the second Bush administration is premature. Both Cheney and Rice have worked closely for many years, and they share a common view of world affairs. They both fear and hate the Iranian regime, and they do not want it to have nuclear capability.
But they are not interested in any direct talks with Iran on any issue, never mind just the nuclear one. They do not see the benefit of improving relations between Iran and the US. However, Washington is going through a major policy shift which is causing all sorts of changes. This shift is not a U-turn on Iran, but a change on how to handle Iraq.
It has finally become clear to the administration that the present US situation in Iraq is not tenable and that the military surge needs a political dimension for which there is no clear route forward yet.
The Bush administration's new priorities on Iraq are focused on how to get out of the present disaster with the minimum political failure.
Surprising U-turn
In late May, in a surprising U-turn, Bush confirmed that he was looking at using the Baker-Hamilton report as the basis of the American plans for Iraq after the surge. This bipartisan report was published six months ago and was viciously attacked at the time by the Bush administration as a recipe for sell-out.
But attitudes have changed as the fury of the civil wars raging in Iraq has grown all the more fierce, and the US military's failure to improve the situation is all the more obvious.
Suddenly Baker-Hamilton appears more attractive to the desperate administration, so an American U-turn in Iraq seems to be underway, as the domestic political horror of going into the 2008 elections reporting total failure in Iraq has finally sunk into the Republican administration.
But this does not translate into a U-turn on Iran, and Rice and Cheney both in agreement that they do not want talks with Iran.
However, although the United States refuses to include Iran in its vision of the Gulf, eventually the American government will have to realise that it cannot wish Iran away forever.
The present US refusal to engage Iran is damaging the stability of the Gulf, and Cheney and Rice will need to think again on their refusal to recognise this.
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