It is not obvious what Obama actually has in mind. That is not unreasonable, since a new president should not reveal his bargaining position too early. At the same time, Obama has made three points clear. The first is that he regards Iran as the leading foreign policy issue facing his administration and that he intends to engage early on that. He also has sent a signal to the Iranians that he is prepared to shift the tone of the conversation. This is important when we recall that the Iranians congratulated Obama on his election —- something they haven’t done with new U.S. presidents since the Iranian revolution. Now both sides have signaled an atmospheric shift. Third, in mentioning clarity on the bottom line, Obama signaled that he would continue the Bush administration’s policy on opposing Iranian nuclear weapon development.

This was all meant to signal a shift in approach to Iran without changing policy goals. That raises the question of what the Bush administration’s policy on Iran actually was. An article in The New York Times on Sunday claimed that as long ago as 2006, the Israelis approached the United States with a request for special bunker-busting bombs and permission to cross Iraqi air space in order to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities, but the Bush administration vetoed the plan. Instead, the administration supported a strategy of covert action aimed at delaying the development of Iranian nuclear weapons; it wanted nothing to do with a military strike on Iran.

This would indicate that leaks from the Bush administration that the United States was considering strikes on Iranian facilities were, in fact, bluffs. The United States not only was not considering strikes, but was blocking the Israelis from carrying one out. Instead, Washington was focused on highly secret, covert operations. Of course, the best sort of covert operation is one that the target doesn’t know exists. Normally, we regard such leaks as deliberate attempts to shape Iranian thinking, but in this case what was leaked was minimal. The Iranians are aware that they are a priority target for covert operations. That is no great revelation. The article said that the United States wanted to interfere in some unspecified way in Iran’s acquisition of technology and materials. That reveals hardly anything.

It does, however, point to a number of interesting circumstances. First, it is now asserted that the United States opposed military action against Iran for quite a while; second, it has been pointed out that there are covert operations against Iran under way. Obama may be changing the atmospherics, but the underlying reality has been that overt military action was not on the table. Furthermore, it is not clear that the atmospherics are going to change while the United States is conducting covert operations, and it is very hard to imagine Obama abandoning covert operations. He may reshape them in some way, but is not likely to abandon them.

In this context, Obama’s statements boil down to being prepared to talk more openly with the Iranians without changing the final goals of U.S. policy and without any clear shift in the means being used. The fundamental change visible at this point is that, where Bush hinted at possible military action without intending to follow through, Obama will drop the threats for the time being while testing the Iranians.

The problem that Obama has is the same one that Bush had. He doesn’t want Iran to develop nuclear weapons, he doesn’t want Israel to attack Iran, and he doesn’t want the United States to attack Iran. Obama therefore wants to engage Iran in open discussion of the matter, as distinct from Bush’s more indirect approaches. That is a change. But the question that really matters — and this assumes that the Iranians will want talks without a prior commitment by Obama not to use military force under any circumstances –- is this: Once there are talks, what exactly will Obama say to the Iranians that hasn’t been said already?

The United States doesn’t want Iran working on nuclear weapons. What will Obama offer them in return?