Rapprochment?

There are a few hints out there that the Bush Administration is looking to get out of the way of its own belligerent rhetoric with respect to Iran. Perhaps Bob Gates or the uniformed military have just shut down all other options, and now they have to go to Tehran hat in hand. But the signs are there.

Apparently back-channel negotiations have been heating up.

Using Switzerland as an intermediary, American and Iranian officials have exchanged diplomatic messages on a variety of nuts-and-bolts subjects, including the fate of a U.S. citizen missing in Iran, the future of five Iranian operatives whom American forces seized in Iraq, and old financial and property disputes.

The contacts amount to a shift for the White House, which rebuffed an Iranian offer of wide-ranging talks on Iran's nuclear program, Middle East peace and direct relations after the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Instead of engaging Iran, the White House largely shut down the Swiss channel, which both countries use in the absence of formal diplomatic relations.

"There's no doubt there's more willingness to talk now than there was a few years ago," one State Department official said.

And the President is typically incoherent here, but he does suggest that direct talks with Iran may happen at this week's meeting in Egypt of Iraq's neighbors.

This is a hopeful sign, more likely an acknowledgement that President 28% cannot start War #3 right now. But I want to know what happens when word gets out in Wingnut Wonderland that we've been talking to the Iranians!!! Iranians!!!1!! Betrayal!!!1!

The whole "with us or against us" thing has bred little authoritarians in this country, and that genie won't go back in the bottle.

UPDATE: Another sign was that we were begging Iran to come to the Iraq talks this week. All of our tough rhetoric on Iran has made it harder to do this diplomacy now, and put us in a terrible bargaining position, which is a shame.