Appointment: Baghdad, Saturday, March 10

In a day or so, all eyes will be on Baghdad, where a meeting of regional diplomats will be the venue for a potentially promising resumption of talks--at first indirect, but perhaps direct later on--between U.S. and Iranian diplomats.

The Baghdad meeting on Saturday is a semi-regular gathering of diplomats from countries neighboring Iraq to discuss Iraq's future. Preparations were long underway for the meeting when last week the State Department suddenly announced that U.S. diplomats would attend as well. Technically, the U.S. will be present as part of the P-5--the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. But the reality is that the P-5's plan to join the gathering is itself a last-minute surprise and is something of a cover enabling the U.S. to sit face to face with Iranian diplomats for the first time since 2004. The State Department spokesman on Wednesday did not rule out a bilateral meeting between the U.S. and Iranian diplomats on the sidelines of the Baghdad conference.

If all goes as planned, another meeting of the neighbors without the P-5 (or U.S. officials) will take place in Cairo in early April at the level of foreign ministers. That meeting in turn is set to be followed by another expanded meeting including the P-5 in Istanbul at the ministerial level. It is then and there, if everything comes off smoothly, that Secretary of State Condelleeza Rice will sit around a table with other foreign ministers including Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki.

Well-placed diplomats I have spoken to about the meeting are becoming hopeful that this interesting diplomatic dance could be the start of a new effort by the U.S. and Iran to reach some common ground. At a minimum, it may yield some understandings to reduce tensions in the Iraq, Lebanon and and Israeli/Palestine issues. At the max, it would be the beginning of a long process to normalize relations, which would entail addressing Iran's demands and needs on matters like the nuclear program as well as American concerns about Iranian support for Hizballah, Hamas and Iraqi Shiite Muslim militia groups. The U.S. broke relations with Iran after Iranian protesters seized the American embassy in Tehran in 1979 and held U.S. diplomats hostage for 444 days with the support of the Iranian regime.

Don't expect it to be easy. What we have been seeing since the first Iraq war and especially since the second is a struggle for the Middle East, with the U.S. and Iran vying for geopolitical position and hearts and minds. It is not yet clear that either side is willing to come to an accommodation that accepts the other's interests. But diplomats I spoke with believe that both sides seem to be straining now to cool things down before the rhetoric really gets out of control.

The Iranians, working with U.S. ally Saudi Arabia, have been trying to quell Sunni-Shiite tensions in the region and resolve the dangerous political standoff in Lebanon. For its part, a diplomat said, Bush seems to be starting to implement the Baker-Hamilton recommendation that he initially rejected to hold talks with Iran on the Iraq issue. The U.S. is stepping up the conciliatory language in a marked change from the Bush administration's past regime-change rhetoric (axis of evil, etc).

In testimony to the House Foreign Affairs Committee this week, Under Secretary of State R. Nicholas Burns made several positive statements that have not gone unnoticed, for example.

Burns said: "We are making every effort to improve U.S.-Iranian relations." He also said: "Any effective diplomatic strategy must provide one's adversary with exit doors when, as Iran has certainly done, it paints itself into a diplomatic corner."

Referring to Condi Rice's offer to hold direct talks with Iran if it suspends its uranium enrichment program, Burns said: "This offer remains on the table." He said complying with international nuclear obligations would help Iran "ensure its security." Burns said that when the U.N. imposes new sanctions on Iran, the U.S. "will also reaffirm our wish to negotiate. We hope the Iranian regime will reflect on its isolation and decide to meet us at the negotiating table." At one point, Burns said: "I cannot emphasize this enough, we seek a diplomatic solution to the challenges posed by Iran."

There may be something new here. Besides attending the Baghdad meeting and repeating a standing offer for talks, is something more entailed in the "every effort" Burns says that the U.S. is making to "improve" relations with Iran? What "exit doors"--another name for a face-saving formula for compromising--is the U.S. providing to Iran as part of the "diplomatic strategy" Burns speaks of? Is the U.S. offering the Iranian regime a package that will explicitly "ensure its security" by way of formally recognizing the Islamic regime? Some Middle East cynics fear the U.S. is just talking nice now to give itself political cover with the international community when it eventually attacks Iran. But the Baghdad meeting raises some interesting questions and is a push in the right direction.

--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo