Iran Agrees to Talk With U.S. About Iraq

"I think Iran's and the United States' short-term interests in Iraq actually coincide," said Ray Takeyh of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Iranian and U.S. diplomats have coordinated on regional conflicts in recent years. Tehran sent representatives to Germany for a conference that the United States convened to plan for Afghanistan's transition following the 2001 U.S.-led invasion. Iranian diplomats continued to meet with U.S. officials in Geneva and Paris in the run-up to the Iraq war, albeit secretly after Bush included Iran in the "axis of evil" he described in his January 2002 State of the Union address.

The governments exchanged information on hundreds of Arab fighters who fled Afghanistan into Iran, including a handful of senior al-Qaeda officials whom Iran offered to exchange for Iranian guerrillas in U.S. custody in Iraq. The guerrillas had tried to overthrow the Iranian government.

Bush eventually rejected the offer, a decision that infuriated the Iranians and marred the secret talks.

The breaking point on the American side came in early May 2003, when Khalilzad flew from Baghdad to Geneva bearing intelligence that a terrorist attack might be imminent somewhere in the region. According to three participants at the meeting, Khalilzad warned that if a bombing could be traced to al-Qaeda operatives in Iran, the talks would end.

Several days later, on May 12, 2003, a bombing in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, killed 35 people, including nine Americans, and ended the U.S.-Iran dialogue.

Khalilzad publicly called for new talks after being named U.S. envoy to Baghdad. A native of Afghanistan, he is fluent in Farsi, the language of Iran, and is well regarded by many Iranian officials.

"He understands the mind-set here, and he's ambitious himself, so that helps," said Nasser Hadian-Jazy, a Tehran University political scientist who has taught at Columbia University. "I believe it's a good time and a good choice. Both countries this time need each other. The cold peace can't continue. Now they're coming together, not out of love or passion, but out of basic biological necessity."

But the International Crisis Group's Sadjadpour said Iranian officials may not understand how much damage was done to the prospect of renewed relations by Iran's hard-line president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. "In the context of domestic political realities in the U.S., it's almost impossible to reach out to an Iranian regime that has a president who says Israel should be wiped off the map and the Holocaust didn't happen," Sadjadpour said.

Gary G. Sick, a Columbia University professor who served on the National Security Council staff during the hostage crisis, said it was significant that Iran chose to accept Khalilzad's offer so publicly. Larijani volunteered the news to reporters and issued a statement through an official news agency.

The gesture may be intended to mollify erstwhile allies, such as Russia, that have been pressing Iran to show some flexibility as the U.N. Security Council mulls action on the nuclear file. "A quick first reaction is that this is part of Iran's zigzag strategy -- sometimes helpful and moderate, other times hard-line and obdurate," Sick said in an e-mail.

Larijani said the nuclear portfolio should be returned to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

"For example in Iraq, Iran has much influence," he said. "Is it because of a nuclear bomb? It's not. If you look, you'll see its current leaders -- Sunni, Shiite, Kurds -- were our guests here in Iran while the Americans were supplying weapons to Saddam Hussein."

Staff writers Dafna Linzer, Peter Baker and Glenn Kessler in Washington contributed to this report.