Bruce Riedel, who was a National Security Council official at the time and worked on the meeting attempt, said in an email that the effort with Picco had “no relationship” to the Shiraz prisoners, and said it was a “lost opportunity by Iran.”

Despite the failure of the UN meeting, Iran and Israel’s worldwide supporters silently began complying with the deal over the Shiraz prisoners. Protests over the case were muted, and the media’s attention ebbed to near zero. In twos and threes, the prisoners were quietly released, with no publicity. They walked out of Shiraz jail, were reunited with their families, and flew to Israel.

The last five were released on February 19, 2003. U.S. Jewish groups posted a discreet notice online on March 18, and the news was ignored amid the clamor over the impending U.S. invasion of Iraq. Only in April did a brief Associated Press article appear, with no details. No mention was made of the extensive back-channel negotiations.

The thirteen Shiraz Jews now live in Israel with their families. In Iran, no further crackdowns have been reported against the twenty-five-thousand-member Jewish community.

A decade later, Picco and Hoenlein take away markedly different lessons for today’s diplomatic rapprochement with Iran.

“The lesson you learn is that the only language Iran speaks is strength,” said Hoenlein. “The way you have to deal with them is from a position of strength; the pressure’s applied when you mobilize resources such as sanctions, and they respond to it. We had mobilized more than sixty countries. The case became too expensive, the price was too high. It’s the same lesson now – we need to show the Iranians they’ve got to make a choice. Continue their nuclear program, or increased sanctions.”

Picco, for his part, notes that the reformist Khatami was doing essentially the same as current Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is now doing with the nuclear negotiations: attempting to mend fences with the West while protecting Iran’s core interests. Despite the poisonous distrust on all sides, diplomacy worked.

“The main lesson is, if you really are good at negotiating, and if the people you are dealing with have guts and leadership capacity but also look into the future and want to build a future, then you have a chance,” he said. “If you want peace, it can be done.”

Robert Collier is a writer and consultant in Berkeley, California. He was a foreign affairs reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle for 19 years. The Society of Professional Journalists awarded him its Sigma Delta Chi prize for foreign correspondence in 2003.

Image: Flickr/Sean Hobson. CC BY 2.0.