Lost in the obscure pages of the early coverage of the Iraq war was a moment when, it seemed, the clerical regime in Iran flinched. Soon after Saddam fled and Baghdad became an American town, Iran suddenly entered into negotiations with Great Britain, France and Germany on ending its nuclear program, the most public point of friction with the US. After all, it was Saddam's supposed nuclear program that had been the casus belli for the American invasion, and Bush administration neo-conservatives had been hammering away at the Iranian program in a similar fashion.
Two developments ended this brief moment of seeming triumph for Washington. As a start, American officials [including John Bolton], feeling their oats, balked at the tentative terms negotiated by the Europeans because they did not involve regime change in Iran. This hardline American stance gave the Iranian leadership no room to maneuver and stiffened their negotiating posture.
At the time, in the wake of its successful three-week war in Iraq, the Bush administration seemed ready, even eager, to apply extreme military pressure to Iran. According to Washington Post columnist William Arkin, the official US strategic plan (formally known as CONPLAN 8022-02) completed in November 2003, authorized "a preemptive and offensive strike capability against Iran and North Korea". An administration pre-invasion quip (reported by Newsweek on August 19, 2002) caught perfectly the post-invasion mood ascendant in Washington: "Everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men want to go to Tehran."
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