Why Would Iran Want To Talk?

Just as the skeptics were saying all along, Iran has taken the United States for another ride. Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Thursday his government was open to talks with the United States on his country’s nuclear program, but he rejected the U.S. precondition that it must quit enriching uranium first.
Mottaki was responding to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who said the previous day that the United States would be willing to talk with Iran if it suspended its uranium enrichment and reprocessing.
The U.S. offer to negotiate was seen as a major policy shift. Washington has had no high-level talks with Teheran for more than 25 years. The two countries formally broke off relations in 1980, after the seizure of the American embassy in the Iranian capital in 1979.
Many in the United States have faulted America’s systematic isolation of Iran – once a famously staunch American ally with a proud civilization -- for the escalation of tensions. If the mullahs went on the warpath, it was only because of the strong support successive U.S. administrations of both parties provided the Shah’s brutal dictatorship which the Islamic Revolution overthrew.
So the Bush administration got a rare round of applause from leading newspaper editorials for demonstrating “maturity.” Lost in the exultation was the fact that it was Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who first broached the issue of direct talks, not the other way around.
Bush, for his part, appeared to exude a sense of vindication. Teheran’s repudiation, after all, proved that critics of his administration’s hard stance against Iran were wrong. At the end of a cabinet meeting, the U.S. president conceded that it remained to be seen if Iran's seemingly-negative response to the proposal was its last word on the subject.
Bush had enough cover to revert to his characteristic toughness. Foreign ministers of the five permanent U.N. Security Council member countries and Germany, meeting in Vienna, reached agreement on a package of incentives for Iran to halt sensitive nuclear activities, or penalties if it refuses. The offer will now be formally conveyed to Iran.
The so-called "carrots and sticks" package would offer Iran a set of financial and technology incentives if it ended uranium enrichment and returned to nuclear negotiations with Britain, France and Germany. If it refuses, there would be U.N. Security Council action against Iran and escalating sanctions.
But isn’t there a simpler question here? Why should Iran feel the urgency to hold direct talks with the United States when it has the stick of the resurgent Shias next door in Iraq to wield against Washington? And who knows? Mullah Omar of the Taleban may be the latest beneficiary of Teheran’s oil-generated largesse, considering the seriousness the anti-American insurgency has acquired in Afghanistan, another neighbor.
Moreover, each time Ahmadinejad threatens to nuke Israel off the map, he send oil prices shooting up a couple of dollars. That kind of cash inflow would goad Teheran to widen its gaze for potential allies against America, not grovel before the Great Satan it believes it can bog down across its eastern and western borders.