Mark Perry is co-director of the Conflicts Forum, a Beirut-based nongovernmental organization that has, over the past three years, put former senior American and British policy-makers and intelligence officials in talks with Hezbollah and other militant political Islamic groups in Lebanon. He formerly worked as an adviser to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and as a reporter for Newsday. Perry has recently returned from Beirut and is now in Arlington, Virginia. Laura Rozen interviewed him by telephone Friday about the unfolding crisis in Lebanon and Israel.

So explain what your group, Conflicts Forum, is about and under what auspices you have been having a dialogue with Hezbollah

After six years of the Bush administration often resisting calls for pragmatism and compromise from allies and home-grown foreign policy realists alike, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's dramatic announcement Wednesday that the United States would agree to join European-led talks with Iran if Tehran would suspend its uranium enrichment had the power of shock and awe -- if perhaps as short a half-life.

The day after Rice's stunning announcement, sophisticated Iran watchers wonder if Washington and Tehran will ever get to the same negotiating table, or if hardliners have so realigned the decision-making environments in the two countries that they are set on a course towards eventual confrontation that has only just experienced an interesting speed bump.