MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
And I'm Robert Siegel.
Iranian and EU negotiators were scheduled to talk today in Vienna about Iran's nuclear program. The Iranians cancelled. They'll meet now on Thursday. In the absence of talks, U.N. sanctions could move up the agenda. Russia's foreign minister said today that any sanctions must exclude military force and with U.S./Iranian relations tense on several counts, Iranian President Ahmadinejad today restated his offer to debate President Bush. He said it should be at the U.N. General Assembly later this month.
A Washington Post columnist, David Ignatius, was in Iran last week. In fact, this week as well. Filed from there and joins us now in the studio. Welcome.
DAVID IGNATIUS: Hello, Robert.
SIEGEL: You describe in one column last week the sense you get in Iran and elsewhere in the region that Iran's star is on the rise in the region.
IGNATIUS: Well, Iranians certainly tell you that. They think this is their moment. They see the United States in retreat. They look at our predicament in Iraq and have almost a kind of contempt. That's one of the dangerous things about this moment is the Iranian devaluation of American power.
But they think this is their moment to emerge as the dominant country in the region, something they think is rightfully their position. The problem is I can't see a way for Iran to assume that role, which arguably would be in the U.S. interest, without also empowering and emboldening this very radical, erratic leadership of Ahmadinejad.
SIEGEL: Yes, where do you see what might be a very rational reading of what's happened in the past couple of years on the part of the Iranians - that the Taliban are gone from Afghanistan, Saddam Hussein is gone from Iraq, Hezbollah held out against Israel in southern Lebanon. And on the other hand, what sometimes seems to be an irrational sense of national grandeur that we hear in the rhetoric of Ahmadinejad.
IGNATIUS: Well, I think what makes this difficult for us is that even as Iran grows in power, it has a big economy, a big hardworking population, it remains in many ways a revolutionary state. You know, people still are chanting at Friday prayers at Tehran University death, death, death to America, as if the revolution happened yesterday.
As I was leaving Friday prayers at Tehran University last Friday, I stopped a young Iranian who was coming out who didn't look crazy and asked through my translator what should I understand when I hear you chanting death to America? He looked very embarrassed and he said oh, we don't mean death to the American people. We mean death to your oppressive ideas.
And there is a sense of unreality that they can, you know, go taking a pop at America rhetorically and on the ground in Iraq not so rhetorically, and we won't do anything about it. Iranians will say to you that they count on American rationality to avoid war. You won't be so stupid as to launch a war against us, they'll tell you. People almost blasé in the streets at a time when we here in Washington see the crisis as escalating.
SIEGEL: One reporter from Iran told us here that her reading of Iranian behavior right now is that they hear talk of regime change. They can't imagine anything changing throughout the Bush presidency and therefore their strategy would be to stretch out this crisis at least until there's a new power in Washington, perhaps reminiscent of when they waited until the Reagan inauguration to release the embassy hostages eons ago.
IGNATIUS: Well, it's very hard to imagine any improvement in the situation for the remainder of the Bush presidency. I'm not sure that there are two years, an easy two-year clock, for either side to wait this out. I do think this crisis is moving relentlessly towards some kind of confrontation.
I made an analogy in one article I filed from Tehran to the way people drive in the streets there. I mean, Tehran traffic is really nuts. At almost every intersection you see cars almost colliding, but they don't collide. I mean usually somebody pulls back at the last minute, almost always. I think Iranians assume that this, like a business negotiation, like driving in the streets will, in the end, lead to avoidance of a collision and some kind of last minute compromise.
That optimism, and it is optimistic, I don't think is shared in Washington.
SIEGEL: Coming back to Washington and being read in The Washington Post what, for you, is the most important insight into Iranian thinking that you think American policymakers ought to be aware of right now?
IGNATIUS: I think policymakers need to understand that Iran thinks this is our time. We need to be recognized for the great nation that we are. And if we could find a way to grant Iran that recognition, to say we accept the Islamic revolution. We see and in some ways admire the things that you've done in the years since the revolution and we'd like to bring you into the framework of international security, but you have to provide reassurances and we, for our part, will provide mutual reassurances.
I think if that dialogue could happen, it would of great benefit to both sides. This is Iran's moment. They should seize that moment and the United States should be prepared to talk if they are prepared.
SIEGEL: David Ignatius, thank you very much for talking with us. Columnist David Ignatius, of The Washington Post. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
