https://thehill.com/opinion/international/447235-more-us-talks-with-iran-are-doomed-to-fail
The latest U.S. offer of negotiations with Iran prompts the same question with which every administration of recent decades has grappled: Is behavioral change in Tehran possible without regime change?
We Americans want to think so, but the evidence of four decades suggests otherwise. Consequently, President Donald Trump and his team may be headed toward another fruitless U.S. effort to create a better Iran.
With the president concerned that growing tensions between Washington and Tehran were setting the stage for war, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said this week that the administration is ready to talk with “no preconditions.”
That came days after the president himself sought to ease tensions by deriding National Security Advisor John Bolton’s enthusiasm for regime change. Of the Islamic Republic, Trump told reporters in Tokyo, “It has a chance to be a great country with the same leadership. We’re not looking for regime change. I just want to make that clear. We’re looking for no nuclear weapons.”
The new U.S. offer of talks marked a dramatic change of direction for an administration that, as Pompeo announced a year ago, said it wouldn’t talk to Tehran until the regime satisfied a list of sweeping demands that included an end to its ballistic missile tests and its support of militants in Syria and Yemen.