Condi's conundrum: will Rice get Powelled?

• Author: Rozen, Laura
• Position: Condoleezza Rice

In 2005, when Condoleezza Rice became secretary of state, she took over from someone with whom she shared more than a few similarities: Colin Powell. Like Powell, Rice enjoys popularity beyond that of anyone else in the administration. Like Powell, she was schooled in the realist tradition of foreign policy thinking. And, like Powell, she now finds herself, two years into a Bush term, in a high-stakes game of geopolitical brinkmanship, the outcome of which will determine whether we are plunged into a new Persian Gulf war. With Powell, it was Iraq; with Rice, Iran.

Four years ago, Powell voiced considerable skepticism about the wisdom of invading Iraq, whereas Rice, according to most accounts, agreed with--or at least accommodated--those in the administration bent on Iraqi regime change. But as secretary of state, she seems to have become, over the past year, the leader of efforts within the administration to find a negotiated settlement with Iran over its presumed nuclear weapons program, one that avoids direct military confrontation. Rice certainly has at least one powerful motive for averting a war with Iran: her own reputation. Over the past two years, as books by Bob Woodward, Ron Suskind, and others have exposed the administration's inner workings, Rice's competence and credibility have been called into question. (Woodward cited George H. W. Bush as saying that as national security adviser, Rice was a "disappointment" and "not up to the job.") Her legacy now rests on her ability to solve the Iran crisis peacefully.

In this, she possesses advantages Powell lacked. She is one of the president's most trusted confidants, something Powell could never claim. And as a result of the disaster in Iraq (and the disaster for Republicans at the polls last fall) most of the hard-liners who made Powell's life miserable in Bush's first term are gone or have been sidelined--though the vice president and his sizeable national security staff are still powerful.

What remains the same is that a secretary of state in the Bush administration is extremely constrained. Rice belongs to an administration averse to real diplomacy with its adversaries, and therefore lacks a secretary of state's most elemental tool: the authority to negotiate directly. In more than a year of intensive reporting on U.S. policy vis-a-vis Iran, in numerous ongoing conversations with administration officials and Iran watchers, I've observed how Rice, in attempting to take the lead on Iran policy, has had to walk a very taut tightrope. On the one hand, she must mollify those in the administration still bent on regime change in Iran. On the other, she has taken the lead of a new crop of experts who believe in modifying Iran's behavior through diplomacy. Recently, her team has achieved some notable successes. On February 26, for instance, the Washington Post's David Ignatius reported that the United States planned to join Iran to discuss Iraq security at a Baghdad conference in March.

But the difficulty Rice faces is that every successful effort to pressure Iran through firm but peaceful means has the potential to be hijacked by those seeking grounds for military confrontation--just as Powell's efforts once were. Will Rice's gamble on diplomacy work, despite the formidable odds, or will she get Powelled? That is precisely the question that lingers in the minds of some within the State Department. "People are very conscious of Iraq,"...