Sometimes events create space for diplomacy where none existed before. I want to think that this might be the case with the new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran.
What matters about the NIE is less the details than the atmospherics. The details themselves are hard to parse: Yes, we now believe that in 2003 Iran halted a previously unknown covert military program to build a bomb; but no, that doesn't mean Iran has stopped its threatening nuclear activity or that it has given up its ambition to be a nuclear power.
When you boil it all down, the United States has aimed its intelligence rifle at Tehran--and shot itself in the foot. It has undercut its old policy and embarrassed itself and its allies. So what's the advantage in that, you ask?
Simply this: The NIE creates a way for both parties to come to the negotiating table without losing face. Both sides can start a new narrative, in place of the old one that led to an impasse. It is this serendipitous aspect--this unexpected reversal of the parameters of the game--that interests me most.
A similar unlikely opening with Iran came in 1987, after a U.S. Navy cruiser in the Persian Gulf accidentally shot down an Iranian civilian airliner. It was an appalling tragedy, but it created space for Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini to do what he dreaded, yet knew he must: end the ruinous war with Iraq. Is it possible that the NIE could provide a similar opportunity for both sides to do what is unpleasant, but necessary?