I did a little research and found this article relating to Iran and 9/11. Iran did want to negotiate with the US after 9/11 in regards to their nuclear program, terrorist support, and assistance with the "terrorist" search. and it wasn't just Iran that offered to help.
big snip...
"The United States was about to mount a global war on terrorism with complete legitimacy from the United Nations," recalls Leverett, "and these states didn't want to get on the downside of it." Within weeks (of 0/11), Iran, Syria, Libya, and Sudan all approached the United States through various channels to offer their help in the fight against al-Qaeda. "The Iranians said we don't like al-Qaeda any better than you, and we have assets in Afghanistan that could be useful, " Leverett recalls.
It was the beginning of a period of extraordinary strategic cooperation between Iran and the United States. As America began preparing for the military operation in Afghanistan, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Ryan Crocker held a series of secret meetings with Iranian officials in Geneva. In those meetings, Iran offered search-and-rescue help, humanitarian assistance, and even advice on which targets to bomb in Afghanistan, according to one former administration official. The Iranians, who had been working for years with the main anti-Taliban coalition, the Northern Alliance, also advised the Americans about how to negotiate the major ethnic and political fault lines in the country.
In Dec. of '01 there was a conference in Bonn. The purpose of the conference was to decide on what a post-Taliban Afghanistan would look like. Iran played a large diplomatic part in the success of the conference, acting as a negotiator with the Northern Alliance and pressing for anti-terrorism language in the agreement.
After the conference the Office of Policy Planning with support of the CIA encouraged continued negotiations with Iran. Their current nuclear program and their support for terrorism were areas for negotiations. "The Policy Planning staff had been putting together options that would revolve around different levels of incentives, ranging from modest benefits such as support for Iran's membership in the World Trade Organization to a more comprehensive offer that would include security guarantees, according to a source familiar with the proposal."
Enter the neo-cons who had no intention of allowing a solution to the Iran "proble" to take place.
The main drama around Iran policy in late 2001 was played out in the White House, where the drafting of the State of the Union message was under way and where the neoconservatives held sway. The inclusion of Iran in the "axis of evil" was at first opposed by then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and her deputy, Stephen J. Hadley, because, as Hadley told journalist Bob Woodward, Iran, unlike Iraq or North Korea, had a "complicated political structure with a democratically elected president." But Bush had already made up his mind; regime change was the goal.
snip...
Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld led the neoconservative push for regime change. But it was Douglas Feith, the abrasive and aggressively pro-Israel undersecretary of defense for policy, who was responsible for developing the details of the policy. Feith had two staff members, Larry Franklin and Harold Rhode, who spoke Farsi, and a third, William Luti, whom one former U.S. official recalls being "downright irrational" on anything having to do with Iran. A former intelligence official who worked on the Middle East said, "I've had a couple of Israeli generals tell me off the record that they think Luti is insane."
snip...
In December, the question of policy toward the state sponsors of terrorism was taken up by the "deputies committee" made up of Hadley, who served as chairman, Armitage, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, and a deputy to CIA Director George Tenet. The outcome was already foretold. "It was decided that to engage with these states was a concession to terrorism, a reward for bad behavior," Leverett recalls. In rules for dealing with Iran and Syria, referred to informally as the "Hadley Rules," the committee further decreed that there could be no sharing of intelligence information or any other cooperation on al-Qaeda, although the states in question could be asked to provide information or other cooperation unilaterally. The new rules put U.S. policy toward Iran in a straitjacket requiring that Iran could never be treated as a sovereign equal on any issue.
There is much more at the link.
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?articleId=11539other links:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5377914.stmhttp://www.antiwar.com/orig/porter.php?articleid=8590
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