Kevin Drum presents a series of news reports which state that in May 2003 the Iranians were prepared to negotiate the differences between the US and Iran and sent back-channel messages to that effect. But the Bush administration was never able to decide how to respond and the Iranian effort died.
The best guess is that the people in Cheney's office and in Undersecretary of Defence for Policy Douglas Feith's Office of Special Plans killed any effort that did not call for regime change in Iran.
Since then, relations with Iran have only gotten worse. Bush's bellicose statements towards Iran right before their elections seemed designed to drive Iranian voters to elect the most extreme anti-American running, and they did.
"Regime change." That's the code word for U.S. going to war against Iran, right?
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