The next U.S. president, whether it is John McCain or Barack Obama, should reorient American policy toward the Islamic Republic of Iran as fundamentally as President Nixon reoriented American policy toward the People's Republic of China in the early 1970s. Nearly three decades of U.S. policy toward Iran emphasizing diplomatic isolation, escalating economic pressure, and thinly veiled support for regime change have damaged the interests of the United States and its allies in the Middle East. U.S.-Iranian tensions have been a constant source of regional instability and are an increasingly dangerous risk factor for global energy security. As a result of a dysfunctional Iran policy, among other foreign policy blunders, the American position in the region is currently under greater strain than at any point since the end of the Cold War.

It is clearly time for a fundamental change of course in the U.S. approach to the Islamic Republic. By fundamental change, we do not mean incremental, step-by-step engagement with Tehran, or simply trying to manage the Iranian challenge in the region more adroitly than the Bush administration has done. Rather, we mean the pursuit of thoroughgoing strategic rapprochement between the two nations.

Such rapprochement would be most effectively embodied in the negotiation of a U.S.-Iranian "grand bargain." A grand bargain approach means putting all of the principal bilateral differences between the United States and Iran on the table at the same time and agreeing to resolve them as a package.

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By Flynt Leverett, New America Foundation
with Hillary Mann Leverett, STRATEGA