WASHINGTON has a strange idea of how to emphasise its supposed commitment to a diplomatic solution of current concerns about Tehran's nuclear ambitions.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice proclaims that, for direct talks to take place, Iran must fully and verifiably suspend its enrichment and reprocessing activities.
And, presumably to set Iran's fears at rest, she then compounds matters by refusing to forswear military intervention.
Her boss George W Bush still seems incapable of realising that his tough-sounding rhetoric intended for domestic consumption is witnessed immediately by the rest of the world.
Issuing numbered ultimatums to Tehran may play well with his constituency at home, but it is guaranteed to have precisely the opposite effect with not only Iran but any state that values its own national independence.
One need not necessarily be an admirer of Iran's brutal theocracy to accept that there are good reasons for Iranian scepticism about US intentions.
Prior to the 1979 popular uprising that overthrew the corrupt and dictatorial monarchy headed by Shah Reza Pahlavi, Iranians had suffered a quarter-century of repression.
The Shah was Washington's creature, who had been imposed on the Iranian people, following the US and British-instigated military coup against the reformist prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh, who had nationalised Iran's oil assets.
National self-respect and suspicions over US coveting of their energy resources motivate the reactions of most Iranians, irrespective of their attitude to their government, to the barrage of propaganda against Iran's nuclear power programme.
Despite media hysteria, Iran is doing nothing illegal in enriching uranium.
Under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, every state has the right to produce nuclear energy for peaceful purposes and to expect assistance from nuclear powers in its production.
Washington did nothing to prevent Israel, Pakistan, India or apartheid South Africa from developing a nuclear arsenal, yet it asserts, without verifiable evidence, that Iran is hell-bent on pursuing such a goal.
This would certainly be against the NPT, but, then again, so is the refusal of the acknowledged nuclear powers to phase out their armaments and so is US willingness to overlook India's previous breaches of nuclear weapons test bans to pursue military co-operation as part of its political campaign to woo Delhi.
Nuclear weapons are an ever-present threat to the future of our world and they should all be decommissioned.
But that can only be achieved on the basis of all states being treated as equals, rather than one superpower designating itself and its allies as the "international community" and giving itself the right to pronounce on other states' intentions and to issue threats.
Direct talks between Iran, the US and other countries are far preferable to an atmosphere of hostility, but the source of that hostility - US imperialist arrogance - must be replaced by mutual respect and equality to make them possible.
