Analysis: Hopes for Better Iran Ties Lag

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration's second-term gambit to remake the troubled U.S. relationship with Iran has run out of gas and time.

The centerpiece of the effort, a 2006 offer for the highest-level direct U.S.-Iranian talks since the former allies severed ties nearly three decades ago, went nowhere. The U.S. drive to impose U.N. penalties on Iran over its nuclear program barely pinched the oil-rich nation, and perhaps pushed Iran farther from the bargaining table.

A smaller attempt to engage Iran on a topic of mutual concern _ the fate of Iraq _ has had no measurable effect.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's nearly two-year-old offer to negotiate Iran's disputed nuclear program came with a tantalizing promise that she would also listen to anything else the Iranians wanted to say. That was a remarkable curtsy to a government widely distrusted within the Bush administration and branded by Bush as part of an "axis of evil."

It also came with conditions Iran saw no reason to meet.

Now, both sides are running out the clock on Bush's term.

"No one sees it as more advantageous than not to try to get some deal now," said a senior administration official close to Iran planning who spoke privately to discuss internal deliberations. "It's easier to just let it slide to the next administration."

Some Iran analysts said the carrot-and-stick offer came too late, after a brief window for rapprochement with Iran had closed. Others said it once had a slim chance of success but was overtaken by events.

"I suppose there is still a chance" that Iran could meet U.S. and international conditions and agree to new talks over its nuclear program, said Ray Takeyh, top Iran analyst at the Council on Foreign Relations. "But that's sort of like saying if I was 6-8, I could play for the Celtics."

Having failed to coerce Iran to bargain, the U.S. is loosing ground in its effort to punish the clerical rulers for rejecting the offer.

The U.S. is leading the push for a third set of U.N. penalties even though Iran has ignored two rounds of watered-down measures. The fight this time has taken far longer than the U.S. wanted and the proposed measures are far weaker than the U.S. once sought.

A recent U.S. intelligence assessment that Iran had a clandestine weapons program but stopped working on it four years ago has taken the punch out of Washington's argument for new penalties. It also has effectively removed the threat _ always far-fetched _ that the U.S. would go to war over the issue.