....As the United States was beginning its military occupation of Iraq in April, the Iranians were at work on a bold and concrete proposal to negotiate with the United States on the full range of issues in the U.S.-Iran conflict.....
...The proposal, a copy of which is in the author’s possession, offered a dramatic set of specific policy concessions Tehran was prepared to make in the framework of an overall bargain on its nuclear program, its policy toward Israel, and al-Qaeda.....
....The proposal offered “decisive action against any terrorists (above all, al-Qaeda) in Iranian territory” and “full cooperation and exchange of all relevant information.”....
....To meet the U.S. concern about an Iranian nuclear weapons program, the document offered to accept much tighter controls by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in exchange for “full access to peaceful nuclear technology.” It proposed “full transparency for security [assurance] that there are no Iranian endeavors to develop or possess WMD” and “full cooperation with IAEA based on Iranian adoption of all relevant instruments (93+2 and all further IAEA protocols).” That was a reference to new IAEA protocols that would guarantee the IAEA access to any facility, whether declared or undeclared, on short notice -- something Iran had been urged to adopt but was resisting in the hope of getting something in return.....
....The Iranian proposal also offered a sweeping reorientation of Iranian policy toward Israel. In the past, Iran had attacked those Arab governments that had supported the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and Tehran had supported armed groups that opposed it. But the document offered “acceptance of the Arab League Beirut declaration (Saudi initiative, two-states approach).” The March 2002 declaration had embraced the land-for-peace principle and a comprehensive peace with Israel in return for Israel’s withdrawal to 1967 lines. That position would have aligned Iran’s policy with that of the moderate Arab regimes.....
....Nevertheless, within a few days, Rumsfeld and Cheney had persuaded Bush to cancel the May 21 meeting with Iranian officials. In a masterstroke, Rumsfeld and Cheney had shut down the only diplomatic avenue available for communicating with Iran and convinced Bush that Iran was on the same side as al-Qaeda.....
....By the second half of 2003, American Iran policy had already begun to shift toward the issue of nuclear weapons, on which the neoconservative John Bolton, then the undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, played the lead role. The policy was to put pressure on Iran to force it to completely give up its nuclear fuel cycle by getting the IAEA to vote to take Iran’s case to the U.N. Security Council.....
....Iran began negotiating on the nuclear issue with the United Kingdom, France, and Germany in September 2003 to avoid the Security Council and the prospect of sanctions, and possibly even U.S. warplanes. But Mohammed El Baradei, the chief of the IAEA, who had been meeting with Iranian officials about their nuclear program for months, knew that the essence of the problem was Iran’s unfulfilled need to negotiate a settlement with the United States. According to an account in Newsday earlier this year, El Baradei met with Powell in January 2004 to appeal to him for serious U.S. involvement in the negotiations, warning that negotiations were the only way the issue could be resolved. But Powell wouldn’t respond.....
...When the IAEA voted in February to refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council due to concerns over its nuclear program, Iran responded by resuming uranium enrichment and, in April, announced progress in enrichment -- all in defiance of U.S. military threats. But analysts familiar with Iranian thinking believe that the enrichment is not for the purpose of acquiring nuclear weapons but to force the United States to negotiate a settlement with Iran. Najmeh Bozorgmehr, an Iranian journalist who has covered Iran policy for several years, says Iranian leaders are now convinced that they had to show the United States “we can give you a hard time” to induce the administration to negotiate. Bozorgmehr says the enrichment is “producing facts on the ground” that Iran hopes will lead to negotiations. Trita Parsi says senior national security officials he interviewed in 2004 indicated that the rejection of Iran’s 2003 proposals had tilted the internal debate toward that view. “If the United States had engaged Iran in 2003,” Parsi says, “Iran would not be enriching now.”.....
In the end, I trust neither. 
