By Trita Parsi
Asia Times
"......As a result, the Bush administration's experimentation with diplomacy with Iran is viewed with great concern by the advocates of war. Lieberman hinted as much on Sunday when he told Face the Nation, "If there's any hope of the Iranians living according to the international rule of law and stopping, for instance, their nuclear-weapons development, we can't just talk to them."
Whether intentional or not, the vocal push to reignite the let's-bomb-Iran discussions undermines the very diplomatic process that constitutes the greatest obstacle to turning the military option into policy.
This debate signals to the ever-so-paranoid decision-makers in Tehran that their cooperation in Iraq will not cause Washington to abandon its apparent plans to take on Iran militarily at a later stage. Absent the potential for such a tradeoff with the US, Iran's incentives to aid the United States in Iraq will quickly diminish and cause the diplomatic track to fail, a development that in turn will pave the way for the military option."
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