Wednesday’s unprecedented offer by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to join multilateral negotiations over Tehran’s nuclear programme was hailed as a positive step by Iran specialists, who warned, however, that its conditional nature could prove problematic. Bowing to weeks of growing pressure from European allies, Rice announced that Washington was willing to join ongoing talks between the EU-3 — Britain, France and Germany — and Tehran provided, however, that the Islamic Republic first “verifiably” freeze its uranium-enrichment efforts.

“This is a positive step, but it’s fraught with some danger in the sense that imposing preconditions, as reasonable as they may be, may invite the Iranians to put forward their own preconditions,” said Trita Parsi, an Iran scholar at Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies (SAIS). “And then suddenly we’re back to square one, in which we have no talks, no progress, and no diplomacy, while the Iranians go ahead with their programme,” he told IPS.

Rice’s announcement came on the eve of the latest rounds of talks between the US, the EU-3, Russia and China in Vienna on a package of carrots and sticks that they hope will persuade Iran to halt its enrichment activities as a first step toward an agreement that would ensure that Tehran could not build nuclear weapons. With support from the EU-3, the Bush administration has been pushing hard in the UN Security Council for a resolution that would impose sanctions against Iran if it did not freeze its enrichment programme. China and Russia, however, have opposed such a resolution in the absence of greater flexibility on Washington’s part.

The Europeans, who for the last three years have acted as Washington’s surrogates in talks with Iran, have also appealed with growing urgency — most recently via last week’s visit to US by British Prime Minister Tony Blair — for the US to join them at the table. Their position has strengthened in recent weeks amid signals by Tehran, including an unprecedented 18-page letter from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Bush himself, that it was ready to engage in direct talks with Washington on a range of issues, including its nuclear programme. The EU-3 have promoted a package that includes providing Iran with light-water nuclear reactors, trade benefits and economic incentives, and discussion of a “framework” to address Iran’s security concerns.

The last component, however, is strongly opposed by administration hardliners, who are led by Vice President Dick Cheney and favour a policy of “regime change” in Iran. One source on Wednesday suggested that administration hawks may have gone along with Rice’s offer in exchange for European promises that Washington will not be asked to provide security assurances as part of any eventual negotiation. Indeed, in answer to one reporter’s question on Wednesday, Rice stressed that “we have not been asked about security assurances, and I don’t expect that we will be”. She also stated that the administration was not taking its military options off the table and stressed that Washington was not interested, at least for now, either in bilateral talks or in negotiations for a “grand bargain” with Tehran that would address all of the key issues, which have divided the two countries.

The careful terms in which she couched the new offer, as well as the precondition that she imposed on it, made clear to observers that the internal battle over Iran policy between administration hardliners and the “realists” centred at the State Department remains unresolved, even if the latter appear to have scored an important victory.

Indeed, as European pressure on the administration to compromise increased over the past weeks, hardline neo-conservatives, whose influence in the administration runs chiefly through Cheney’s office, have been arguing that by talking directly with Tehran, Washington would not only fall into a “trap” designed to extract more US concessions, but also would demoralise the “opposition” in Iran by implicitly according unprecedented recognition to the regime.

Parsi also worried that the precondition to suspend enrichment indefinitely could be a “deal-breaker”. “The Iranian fear is that, if they agree to suspend enrichment, and there’s no progress in the talks, then two or three or four years from now, they could find themselves in a much weaker position,” he said. “This is what happened with the EU-3; the Iranians agreed to suspend so long as talks were taking place, but then the Europeans just stalled.”

As a result, Parsi said Tehran may seek to set its own preconditions for talks, possibly including a limited time horizon in which enrichment will be suspended — a suggestion, he said, it has proposed before — or even a demand that Washington formally recognise it before negotiations take place. “Privately,” he said, “administration officials now clearly recognise that it’s the US that has the weight to make diplomacy work, and that is very positive.” — IPS