US is ready to talk with Iran

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government has finally made a proposal that the rest of the world is ready to work with. The Iranian suggestion on how to start talks has been accepted by Barack Obama's administration, fulfilling a campaign pledge to talk to Iran without pre-conditions.

Iran's proposal ignored the on-going nuclear dispute, but spoke of entering "negotiations in order to lay the groundwork for lasting peace" with the US and five other world powers. The White House was very blunt, saying that even if Iran has ignored the nuclear issue, the Americans will certainly raise it. And even Iran seems willing to compromise, with Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki telling Iranian state television this week that "if the conditions are right, there is a possibility of talks about the nuclear issue with the West".

The core of the dispute between Iran and the US, backed by the UN and most of the world, is a lack of trust because Tehran has not been open enough in its denial that it has a military nuclear programme. This lack of trust led to several rounds of ineffectual UN sanctions and a widening of the dispute to include all sorts of side issues, but the real issue is whether Iran has a plan to manufacture nuclear weapons. Iran denies it has such a programme, but the UN and the US want very clear proof that this is the case.

The allegation that Iran has a military nuclear programme, and a parallel weapons programme to develop the missiles designed to deliver nuclear weapons, is based on a series of vague intelligence documents dating back to 2003. Some of these suggest that the uranium enrichment programme is being continued well past what is required for power generation and will give Iran the capacity to make nuclear weapons. Iran has denied these allegations and has made it clear that it believes the documents that the allegations are based on are insubstantial.

It is not often stated, but it is nonetheless true that Iran, the UN and the US all agree that Iran should not have nuclear weapons. It is also agreed that Iran, under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty that it signed in 1968, has the right to research, develop, produce and use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. These two points of agreement only leave the sensitive issue of ascertaining whether Iran is speaking the truth to a sceptical international community. This is the challenge facing Obama's negotiators.

Ahmadinejad will have his own problems when his team joins the talks in October. Farideh Farhi, a respected commentator on Iran, says that Ahmadinejad may have to drop his "nationalist insistence on Iran's right to uranium enrichment" because this "might allow the possibility of compromise with a sensible US administration, allowing Iran to enrich uranium, either by itself in limited amounts or with multinational partners on Iranian soil in larger amounts, under a robust inspection regime". Farhi believes that as a result of the disputed election, Ahmadinejad's government has been weakened and the broad consensus around the nationalist defence of Iran's right to enrich uranium has been lost.

The Iranian president has sought to shore up his regime by looking for enemies, both internal and external. He has begun to treat his failed political challengers as enemies of the Iranian state, and he views the United States in a similar light. Farhi points out that such a stance requires "the persistence of external conflict and internal polarisation" and she adds that "it will not be possible to decouple the two as long as Iran's post-election crisis remains unsettled".

This is not likely to happen for a long time as Ahmadinejad has managed to hang onto power without the wider support that he grudgingly enjoyed before the post-election fighting. He now has important and influential opponents within the hard-core revolutionary establishment, as well as in the more reformist and liberal parties.

But it is not just Ahmadinejad who has to watch out for opponents at home. In Washington, the hard-line conservatives of the former Bush administration are already attacking Obama for selling out. For example, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's push for more sanctions against Iran, harsh measures and an insistence on regime change was echoed by John Hannah, previously a top aide to former vice president Dick Cheney, who wrote an opinion article criticising the US president.

This Republican position has been attacked by Obama-friendly commentators such as Robert Dreyfuss, who point out that eight years of anti-Iran, pro-regime change bombast from the Bush-Cheney administration did nothing but strengthen Iran's hawks. Obama's dialogue-centred approach to Iran, meanwhile, has helped strengthen the reformists and their allies in the country. Democrats argue that this has confused the Iranian hard-liners and emboldened the liberals.

If Obama focuses on the points of agreement - that Iran has a right to nuclear power for peaceful purposes but no right to nuclear weapons - Ahmadinejad will have little room to manoeuvre and both countries should be able to find a way forward.