William Luers and Thomas Pickering: The Nixon Option for Iran

William Luers served as U.S. ambassador to Czechoslovakia and Venezuela and president of the United Nations Association from 1999 to 2009. Thomas Pickering, under secretary of state for political affairs in the administration of U.S. President Bill Clinton, served as U.S. ambassador to Russia, Israel, Jordan and the United Nations.

Rearranging the deck chairs would not have saved the Titanic. Nor did the endless debates on the shape of the table in the Vietnam negotiations advance the effort to end that malign conflict. Nevertheless, many U.S. presidents have successfully redesigned talks with adversaries in bold new ways to strengthen national security without war. Such boldness is now needed in the negotiations over Iran's nuclear program.

In 1933, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt negotiated personally with Soviet Foreign Minister Maxim Litvinov to open diplomatic relations between the two countries. U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower invited Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to the United States in 1959 to open the eyes of the first Soviet leader ever to visit the country. The bilateral U.S.-China talks in the 1960s were fruitless until U.S. President Richard Nixon and National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger opened a different, more direct discussion through the auspices of Pakistan.

International negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program also need a new concept and broader agenda. The Istanbul meeting last month concluded on a positive note. Both sides decided to find a way to avoid the pattern of mutual recrimination and sterile exchanges. The door is now open to an initial agreement with modest goals.

But don't count on a new era without some form of direct U.S.-Iran discussions...