Time Magazine, 11/9/06:

If Robert Gates joins the Bush cabinet as the replacement for outgoing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, he can be expected to urge President Bush to talk to the leaders of Iran -- an option Bush has thus far avoided.

Gates made his own views on Iran policy known in mid-2004, when he joined Zbigniew Brzezinski -- President Carter's National Security Advisor -- in chairing a task force of scholars who issued a report titled "Iran: Time for a New Approach."

...

Gates' pragmatism on Iran was evident when, in 2004, he briefed reporters on the task force report. "We have forces engaged in Afghanistan and in Iraq," Gates said. "We have a nuclear program going forward in Iran that looks very dangerous. And our view is, do we sit on the sidelines and watch those things happen, including negative things, or do we try and do something about it, for our own interests? We can debate a lot about what's going on inside Iran, how soon things might change in Iran. But what we have to focus on is what is in America's national security interest now and in light of our commitments that we now have in the Middle East and Southwest Asia."

And his own conclusion was that U.S. interests required engaging with Iran -- a view that has not been dominant within the Bush cabinet until now.

Associated Press, today:

Stepped up U.S. military activity in the Persian Gulf is to counter "very negative" behavior by Iran and undercut its belief that American forces are overcommitted in Iraq, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Monday.

Gates said the time is not right for diplomatic talks with Iran, but left open that possibility for the future.

After meeting with senior officials at NATO headquarters, Gates was asked at a press conference what was behind the Bush administration's decision to deploy a Patriot missile battalion and a second aircraft carrier to the Gulf region -- moves announced in connection with a further buildup of ground troops in Iraq...

..."We are simply reaffirming that statement of the importance of the Gulf region to the United States and our determination to be an ongoing strong presence in that area for a long time into the future," he said.

Gates, who as recently as 2004 publicly called for diplomatic engagement with Iran, said the situation has changed.

Seymour Hersh, The New Yorker, 11/20/06:

"Iraq is the disaster we have to get rid of, and Iran is the disaster we have to avoid," Joseph Cirincione, the vice-president for national security at the liberal Center for American Progress, said. "Gates will be in favor of talking to Iran and listening to the advice of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but the neoconservatives are still there" -- in the White House -- "and still believe that chaos would be a small price for getting rid of the threat. The danger is that Gates could be the new Colin Powell -- the one who opposes the policy but ends up briefing the Congress and publicly supporting it."...

...the White House saw Gates as someone who would have the credibility to help it stay the course on Iran and Iraq. Gates would also be an asset before Congress. If the Administration needed to make the case that Iran's weapons program posed an imminent threat, Gates would be a better advocate than someone who had been associated with the flawed intelligence about Iraq. [A] former [senior intelligence] official said, "He's not the guy who told us there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and he'll be taken seriously by Congress."...

...A former senior Bush Administration official, who has also worked with Gates, told me that Gates was well aware of the difficulties of his new job. He added that Gates would not simply endorse the Administration's policies and say, "with a flag waving, 'Go, go'" -- especially at the cost of his own reputation. "He does not want to see thirty-five years of government service go out the window," the former official said. However, on the question of whether Gates would actively stand up to Cheney, the former official said, after a pause, "I don't know."