To Talk With Iran, "lift the ban on simply talking..."

Amb. James Dobbins, special envoy for Afghanistan, in which capacity he worked with Iranian officials in late 2001 to help form a successor regime to the Taliban in Kabul, in the WaPo, here

"...Perhaps the simplest -- and certainly the quickest -- way to launch a dialogue with Iran, and the one least likely to play unhelpfully into the upcoming Iranian election, would be to simply stop not talking to Tehran. For nearly 30 years, American diplomats have been limited as to when and where they could speak to their Iranian counterparts. The president could authorize Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to lift this ban. It's that simple: Whether the diplomat is Obama's ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice; special envoy Richard Holbrooke, on a visit to Kabul or Islamabad; former assistant secretary of state Christopher Hill when he gets to Baghdad to replace Ambassador Ryan Crocker; or other U.S. diplomats, all would henceforth be free to engage Iranians as they do representatives of other countries with which the United States has troubled relations...."