I just completed an online Council on Foreign Relations debate with Robert Litwak of the Woodrow Wilson Center about whether regime change should be a goal of U.S. policy toward Iran. We fundamentally disagree, but he’s a very serious scholar and his points are well-enunciated. Nevertheless, he cites, albeit with a caveat, an alleged 2003 offer by Iran for a comprehensive peace. There’s been a lot of press misinformation about the episode and its led to a false conventional wisdom. My two cents’ (as an Iran country director at the Pentagon at the time):

The 2003 Iranian offer is bogus. Washington and Tehran were already talking in Geneva, although Tehran broke the commitments it made there. That was the channel, not an unsigned English fax. Even the Swiss foreign ministry acknowledges privately that Tim Guldimann, the Swiss ambassador, was freelancing. Nor do serious proposals come with the caveat that the issuing party only agrees with 80 percent of its own paper.

It is quite unfortunate at these delicate times that a couple limelight-seeking former officials have for reasons only they know amplified a non-proposal into something it was not. It is dangerous and irresponsible to create a false baseline that validates concessions never offered.