Iran is in a vulnerable state: It has reached a post-revolutionary dead end where its anti-American rhetoric serves no strategic purpose. The ideological appeal of its Islamic theocracy in a changing Middle East is near zero. Supporting the brutal Assad has been strategically costly for itself and its Hezbollah surrogate.

Growing Sunni-Shiite tensions across the region can only hurt it. The sanctions-hit economy is a shambles. The country has leveraged its nuclear program for influence about as far it can without taking the added step to bomb-building that would invite a feared U.S. military response. Iran is stymied, its immense potential blocked.

But the Islamic Republic has demonstrated again a deep-seated resilience. By Syrian, Iraqi, Afghan and Egyptian standards it is an island of stability. As Rouhani’s election showed, it is capable of liberal eddies within its authoritarian model. Les Gelb, the president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, noted this month that Iran’s elections are “more free and open than those in most Muslim countries.” This is a modest distinction — the 2009 election and its brutal aftermath were a fiasco — but underscores the important point that, unlike Assad’s Syria, Iran is not a totalitarian society.

The Islamic Republic is here to stay. It has largely acquired the nuclear know-how it sought without taking the high-risk bomb-making decision. The election of Rouhani reflects the desire of a society at an impasse to change course. All of which says: Negotiate now before another “red-line” drags the United States into confrontation.

This requires a new approach from the Obama administration. As William Luers, Thomas Pickering and Jim Walsh argue persuasively in The New York Review of Books, the United States “should take the initiative and communicate directly with the new leadership.” Coercive diplomacy, recommended by Obama’s former Iran hand Dennis Ross, is, they note, “an oxymoron” because “invariably the coercive side dominates the diplomatic side.” The goal, they say, should be a broad dialogue under which, in a phased process, Iran would agree to confine itself to limited enrichment for a peaceful nuclear program under strict international monitoring as sanctions were progressively lifted.

Rouhani and Obama will both be at the United Nations this month. They should meet. Beneath a stale enmity lurk many potential fields of cooperation. As Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has pointed out, “The collapse of the Assad regime would produce a common interest for Washington and Tehran in making sure that radical Sunni Islamists, who hate Shiite Iran even more than America, do not rule Damascus.”

Far-fetched? Yes. But the swirling Middle East has nudged Tehran and Washington just a little closer.