Last month, the foreign ministers of France, Great Britain, and Germany triumphantly announced a new accord with Iran. Formally, the agreement obligates Iran to suspend temporarily all enrichment of uranium in return for some as-yet-unspecified economic benefits, including a steady supply of enriched uranium to fuel Iran's light water nuclear reactor. Informally, the Europeans believe their diplomatic negotiations have helped to suspend Iran's nuclear weapons program. Of course, no one can claim openly that the new deal hinders a nuclear weapons program, since Iran has never admitted to having one. Still, the Europeans proudly point to their accomplishment as proof that diplomacy works.

Last month, the foreign ministers of France, Great Britain, and Germany triumphantly announced a new accord with Iran. Formally, the agreement obligates Iran to suspend temporarily all enrichment of uranium in return for some as-yet-unspecified economic benefits, including a steady supply of enriched uranium to fuel Iran's light water nuclear reactor. Informally, the Europeans believe their diplomatic negotiations have helped to suspend Iran's nuclear weapons program. Of course, no one can claim openly that the new deal hinders a nuclear weapons program, since Iran has never admitted to having one. Still, the Europeans proudly point to their accomplishment as proof that diplomacy works.

In an op-ed that appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Michael A. McFaul and Abbas Milani consider whether the prospects for democratic reform in Iran doomed in light of the recent electoral coup.

By committing to spend $85 million to promote democracy in Iran in the next fiscal year, the Bush administration has signaled a major escalation of its efforts to challenge autocracy in Tehran. At the level of grand strategy, this major policy revision should be welcomed and supported. On principle, the U.S. should support the democratic aspirations of the Iranian people. For reasons of national security, Washington also has an interest in promoting democracy in Iran, as a democratic regime in Tehran would not threaten the U.S. or its allies and could serve as a powerful force for stability in the region.

In an article written for the current issue of the Washington Quarterly Larry Diamond, Michael A. McFaul and Abbas Milani, suggests that the U.S. government seek a comprehensive agreement with Tehran that would "end the economic embargo, unfreeze all Iranian assets, restore full diplomatic relations, support the initiation of talks on Iran's entry into the WTO, encourage foreign investment, and otherwise move toward a normal relationship with the Iranian government." In exchange, Iran would have to suspend its nuclear weapons program...

Bombing Iran will exacerbate, not resolve problems, Michael A. McFaul, Larry Diamond and Abbas Milani demonstrate in a new landmark article. "Rather than throw the reactionaries in Tehran a political lifeline in the form of war, the United States should pursue a more subtle approach: contain Iranian agents in the region, but offer to negotiate unconditionally with Iran on all the outstanding issues. Comprehensive negotiations could offer powerful inducements, such as a lifting of the economic embargo and a significant influx of foreign investment and thus create the jobs necessary to persuade Iran to halt nuclear enrichment. If the hard-liners reject the offer, then they would have to contend with an angry Iranian public. Such internal strife would be far preferable to an Islamic Republic united against the attacking forces of the 'Great Satan.'"

For weeks, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has insisted that there are no fissures in the Iranian regime. Any allegations of such tensions are simply part of a U.S. propaganda war against Tehran, he declared. But then last Monday, at what was billed as a "unity lunch," Khamenei asked 28 of the country's most powerful leaders -- mostly mullahs -- to put aside their differences and coalesce around a single cause: preserving the system.

Amr Hamzawy and Michael A. McFaul: Has President George W. Bush given up on his liberty doctrine? From Libya to Iran to Azerbaijan, the Bush administration appears to have downgraded the importance of democracy promotion in the last several months. Nowhere, however, has a new indifference to democracy been more striking than in Egypt.

Recently there has been much debate over whether Iraq's conflict is a civil war. James D. Fearon argues that this conflict is "one comparable in important respects to other civil wars that have occurred in postcolonial states with weak political institutions." Based on comparable conflicts in the past, Fearon states that hopes of "creating a stable, peaceful, somewhat democratic regime that can survive the departure of U.S. troops -- is unrealistic". There are no good reasons to believe that President Bush's plans for a "surge" attack to reduce the level of violence in Baghdad would quell the power struggle in the long term as "civil wars are rarely ended by stable power-sharing agreements". In the rare successful cases, it has usually taken combatants without factions, unlike Iraq's current situation. "Neither condition is satisfied by Iraq at present," said Fearon.

Kathryn Stoner, CDDRL associate director for research, is Stanford Book Salon host for the month of February 2007. The Book Salon is an online book program that reaches about 4,100 Stanford alumni. Stoner-Weiss volunteered to host the book The Desert Queen by Janet Wallach, "an important book that should be of interest to anyone wondering about the history of conflict in the Middle East, and the formation of Iraq in particular."