Can Iran's Bomb Be Stopped? - James Dobbins
Negotiating with Iran: Reflections from Personal Experience
As the United States conducts bilateral and multiparty negotiations with Iran, it is worth recalling the last, and perhaps only, occasion when the U.S. and revolutionary Iranian governments cooperated closely and effectively. It was almost eight years ago, immediately after the September 11, 2001 attacks. There is a popular perception that the United States spent that fall forming a broad international coalition and overthrowing the Taliban.
It would be more accurate to state that, prompted by the attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., the United States moved to join an existing coalition that had been trying to overthrow the Taliban since the mid-1990s. That coalition consisted of India, Iran, and Russia, and within Afghanistan, the Northern Alliance insurgency. By adding U.S. airpower and removing Pakistani support for the Taliban (also engineered by the United States), this unlikely coalition succeeded in quickly ousting that regime and replacing it with a broadly-based, moderate, and universally recognized successor. Iran’s role in defeating the Taliban was largely indirect, and the result of its long-term material support for the Northern Alliance. Iran’s role in the selection of a successor regime brought it into direct collaboration with the United States.
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