President Obama and his aides are preparing to send a secret message to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, inviting him to open a clandestine “back channel” for direct talks between the United States and Iran. It may sound cloak-and-dagger, but that’s how a lot of delicate diplomacy is done. Back-channel talks opened the way to the U.S. relationship with China in 1972, the Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement in 1993 and other lesser breakthroughs.
