'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

CSM column on US-Iran relations

My column urging easing of US-Iran tensions is in Thursday's Christian Science Monitor.

It uses some of the material I gleaned from Pres. Khatami's visit here.

The column is titled Back from the brink, Iran and the US must now build comity. Here's how the text starts:

The Bush administration and Iran seem to be stepping back from the brink of their confrontation over accusations that Iran is pursuing a clandestine nuclear-weapons program. On Sunday, Iranian officials in Vienna said they would consider suspending their controversial uranium-enrichment program for two months if that would improve the climate for the talks. Washington's chief negotiator there said he welcomed the move.

This is great news. The last thing the Middle East or central Asia needs is an outbreak of fighting between the US and Iran. In Afghanistan and Iraq, US and allied troops face a worrying escalation of hostilities. In both countries, these troops are deployed in vulnerable positions, at the end of equally vulnerable supply lines. Iran lies between those two countries - and abuts the US naval presence in the Persian Gulf.

So it is not nearly enough to take just one small step back from the brink. Washington and Tehran need urgently to start addressing the broader issues of power and security in the region. They also need to make sure that the military forces they both have deployed and primed for action there do not get mistakenly jerked into action. Does each side have a hot-line arrangement to dispel misunderstandings, I wonder? If not, they should.

How can the weightier challenge of stabilizing the long-stormy US-Iran relationship be tackled? This is a real conundrum...

By the way, Scott Harrop and I had an interesting little side-meeting with Col. Pat Lang after his appearance here in town Monday. (I was, sadly, unable to get to the main event. So I'm lucky Scott was able to go, and to post such a full description of it on JWN for us!) We talked about the virtues of a military-to-military hot-line system some. And I learned from Lang that in mil-speak this would be referred to as a "deconfliction mechanism." Right. Let me remember that...

Anyway, here's how the column ends:

It was not clear to me whether Khatami was proposing himself for any key diplomatic role. What did seem clear was his commitment, in a general but philosophically deep way, to the ideals of peaceful coexistence that motivated his US trip. If this visit - and Mr. Bush's wisdom in letting it proceed - helps the world avoid a US-Iranian explosion and brings the two countries closer to improved relations, then that is already cause for huge relief.

So, comments courteous and to the point, as usual, please...