WASHINGTON - The United States should learn a lesson from the failures of its previous wars and resolve its disputes with Iran with diplomacy instead of threats of war that could lead to disasters, two former senior diplomats wrote in a leading US newspaper on Sunday.

The two are Thomas Pickering, former undersecretary of state for political affairs in the Clinton administration and former US ambassador to Russia, Israel, Jordan and the United Nations, and William Luers, former US ambassador to Czechoslovakia from 1983 to 1986 and president of the United Nations Association from 1999 to 2009.

In an article published by The Washington Post, they expressed concerns that US government officials and presidential candidates are talking about possible military actions again Iran nearly every day in order to prevent Teheran from continuing with its nuclear program.

They warned about the risks of triggering off a "catastrophic war," stressing that the United States should learn a lesson from failures of the past wars, most recently the war in Iraq.

"Were it not for the ill-begotten war, thousands of Americans might still be living. America would be a trillion dollars richer and still be the proud, respected and economically healthy nation the world had known," they wrote in the article.

"Without that patient search for different ways to deal with Teheran, Washington will be stuck with a policy that will not change Iran's practices or its regime and could lead to a catastrophic war," they warned.

They called on the US government to deal with the Iran issue through engagement and direct dialogues, because "history teaches that engagement and diplomacy pay dividends that military threats do not."

"Deployment of military force can bring the immediate illusion of 'success,' but always results in unforeseen consequences and collateral damage that complicate further the achievement of America's main objectives," they argued, adding that the US government should make "multiple, creative efforts to engage Iran' s leaders" so as to "achieve more durable solutions at a far lower cost."

Tensions flared between Iran and the United States in the past week. The Iranian navy launched on Saturday a 10-day exercise that covers a length of 2,000 km stretching from the east of the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Aden. The Pentagon warned Iran against any attempt to block the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world's most critical oil routes.

The United States, supported by its Western allies, has applied tough economic sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program, which Washington suspects is an attempt to acquire a nuclear bomb. Iran has insisted the program is solely for the purpose of peaceful energy research.