A Chequer-Board of Nights and Days

IN the United States and in Europe, there is a widespread belief that the Bush administration has failed to engage Iran diplomatically. Among the advisers to the Iraq Study Group, of which I was one, most believed that the Bush administration, not the mullahs' regime, was the most culpable party in foreclosing dialogue between Washington and Tehran after 9/11.

Iran's American-educated longtime ambassador to the United Nations, Javad Zarif, has tirelessly suggested that the administration missed opportunities for improving relations and is tone-deaf to his country's peaceful intentions.

Yet it ought to be clear that just the opposite is the case. The clerical regime today is no more interested in reaching a peaceful modus vivendi with the United States than it was in the 1990s, when President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright all but begged President Mohammad Khatami of Iran to just talk to them.

Case in point: Haleh Esfandiari, an American citizen and the director of the Middle Eastern program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, has been jailed in Tehran's notorious Evin prison since May 8. For years, she has been an articulate and determined advocate of better relations between her homeland, Iran, and her adopted country.

Just as the former Representative Lee Hamilton, the head of the Wilson Center and the co-chairman of the Iraq Study Group, has advocated a "diplomatic offensive" toward Tehran, Mrs. Esfandiari has assiduously practiced micro-diplomatic soft power, using the Wilson Center as a bully pulpit for reconciliation. Suspicious, cynical, hawkish and religiously oriented analyses of the Islamic Republic -- my school of thought -- have not been commonly heard at the Wilson Center under Mrs. Esfandiari and Mr. Hamilton.

In Iran, too, Mr. Hamilton and his Iraq Study Group co-chairman, James Baker, are seen as America's über-engagement proponents. Mrs. Esfandiari had traveled to Iran frequently in recent years and was, on a smaller scale, viewed in a similar way. By arresting her during a visit to her 93-year-old mother, the clerical regime sent a blatant message to Mr. Hamilton about the effectiveness of engagement. He responded with a private letter to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, asking him to allow her to leave the country. Instead, she is behind bars, described by Tehran as an agent of regime change, an "American-Zionist" spy.

It is undoubtedly the Hamilton connection and her marriage with an Iranian-born Jew -- a sin under Islamic law for a Muslim woman -- that made Mrs. Esfandiari such an irresistible target for a regime fond of taking hostages to intimidate its enemies.

The clerical regime doesn't play fair: A 67-year-old woman who has over the years shown Iran's representatives in the United States and other visiting Iranians, including esteemed clerics, the utmost kindness and respect is a perfect target to show the regime's distaste for Iranians who want to build bridges.

Read it all. It is articles such as this one that caused me to craft my own approach to negotiating with Iran in the way that I did. Doubtless, my ideas could probably use more tweaking still. But I have to believe that any discussions with Iran have to take into account discussions over human rights in addition to any and all discussions concerning traditional security issues. The Helsinki model worked in out-negotiating the Soviet Union. It can work as well in out-negotiating Iran's clerical regime.