Inside the mind of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice:

I sure showed them on Tuesday. While poor Dick Cheney was being bombed in Afghanistan, I dropped a bombshell of my own on Capitol Hill: The United States will talk, publicly, with Iran and Syria. I’ll be participating, in Baghdad, probably in April.

Yeah, OK, I know what folks are thinking: The Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group, which pushed such negotiations back in December, has finally prevailed. Well, obviously the president wasn’t just going to go along meekly with their recommendations. First, he had to look tough and defiant. So he did the surge, daring the Democrats to block us.

That’s something Henry Kissinger told W.: Always look tough, even at the risk of looking a little crazy. Chances are the other side will then back down in fear. And that’s what happened. We’re doing what the foreign policy establishment wants us to do, but we’re doing it our way.

But of course, there’s the question: What can we really expect from Iran?

The reality is that the Iranians want us to lose in Iraq, and they’re trying hard on that score, while trying even harder to keep a fig leaf of deniability. So what’s to negotiate there? And oh, by the way, they’re building nuclear weapons and testing space launches as well.

So sure, the Iranians will talk; with the exception of Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, they’re a subtle bunch of good talkers. As my sometime friend Jim Woolsey, the former CIA head, reminds me, the Persians invented chess. So if they maneuver around the diplomatic chessboard for a year or two, all the while working to strengthen their own strategic position, what will the United States have gained? I wonder if Jim Baker will be available to answer that question.

In fact, the fighting in Iraq has become a proxy for the overall struggle between the United States and Iran in the Middle East. And something interesting has happened: Whereas the Iraq war deeply divided the Arab world, the prospect of a struggle with Iran mostly unites the Arabs. The Arabs want us to take Iran down a peg – except, of course, for the Shia Arabs who run most of Iraq, now.

Still, it’s not likely that we’ll go to war with Iran. After all, if it’s just us and Israel doing the actual fighting, we can’t succeed.

So instead of a hot war, we’re looking at a cold war. Fortunately, I know cold wars, having built my career in the last one. So here’s my chance to be the next Dean Acheson. Like my Foggy Bottom predecessor, I can be present at the creation of a new containment architecture.

And containment, bolstered by strong defense, works. Back in the ‘80s, I saw how President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative forced the Soviets to the bargaining table.

Now, missile defense could help contain Iran. Yet, the problem is that we’ve been trying to site a ground-based interceptor in either Poland or the Czech Republic, using the argument that those countries are the best forward line of defense against Iranian missiles. But as I told the Pentagon, a look at a map tells us why the Russians don’t like this plan; those two Eastern European countries are historic enemies of Russia, so of course Moscow doesn’t like it. Yes, the Russians are a threat, but as I remind the generals, the main focus has to be on Iran.

So here’s a possible answer: Prove to Russia that we’re not the enemy by offering to put the interceptor on their territory, pointing south, toward Iran.

The only way we can contain Tehran is by including Moscow as part of the containment strategy.

So I’ll talk to the Iranians, not that I expect much. It’s President Vladimir Putin whom I really need to talk to. And with a little language brush-up, I can do it in Russian. He’ll be charmed.