Over the Thanksgiving holiday, Secretary of State Rice announced that the plan to open a US diplomatic interests section in Iran has been shelved.  According to her statement, the option for a diplomatic outpost is still available, but that the decision should be made by the next administration.
Secretary Rice listed the short amount of time remaining in Bush’s term, along with developments such as the Russia’s incursion into Georgia, as reasons for the decision.
Obviously, we at NIAC and many Americans wishing for a brighter future of US-Iran relations are disappointed in the decision.  We had hoped that a decision to send US diplomats to Iran in the final days of the Bush administration would be the perfect stepping stone to a more ambitious diplomatic agenda under President-elect Obama.