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2 Iran's long road to Sharm
al-Sheikh By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
The Iraq security summit beginning on
Thursday in Sharm al-Sheikh, Egypt, is shaping up
to be a landmark event in the hitherto hostile
US-Iran relations. And, by virtue of the
importance attached to it, given the participation
of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her
Iranian counterpart, Manouchehr Mottaki, both
sides may actually step down from the growing hype
and expectations being built around the meeting.
Announcing Iran's decision to participate
in a telephone call to
Iraq's
embattled Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, Iranian
President Mahmud Ahmadinejad stated, "The Islamic
Republic participates in the meeting in Egypt in
order to assist the security and stability of
Iraq."
Iraq's other neighbors as well as
Bahrain, Japan and Italy, among others, and
representatives of the five permanent United
Nations Security Council members will attend the
meeting in the resort city.
Although
Iran's delegation will be headed by Mottaki, all
eyes are on Ali Larijani, the powerful head of the
Iranian Supreme National Security Council, who
made a surprise visit to Baghdad to discuss the
summit, about which Larijani has expressed
"certain ambiguities and questions".
But
the ambiguities may run on both sides, and a key
question centers on Iran's own diplomatic
priorities. Larijani is fresh from constructive
dialogue with Javier Solana, the foreign-policy
chief of the European Union, in Ankara last week,
on Iran's nuclear program. Solana has said
Larijani told him Iranian Supreme Leader Ali
Khamenei had expressed "readiness to engage in
direct dialogue" with the United States.
Larijani rejects this. "This is pure
lies," Larijani said, maintaining that the issue
of US-Iran dialogue did not come up in his lengthy
talks with Solana. All the same, Solana has
followed the talks with an urgent message to the
United States to open "channels of communication"
with Iran "on all subjects".
Rice appears
to be amenable to Solana's suggestion and has
stated that she does not "rule out" the
possibility of direct dialogue with Mottaki on the
sidelines of the Egypt conference, adding that if
this were to take place, she would discuss not
only Iraq but also the nuclear issue.
Inside Iran, some experts contend that the
meeting is a "consequence of the US attempt to lay
the heavy burden of running Iraq's affairs on the
shoulders of other countries and urge its
neighbors to support the Iraqi government", to
paraphrase the official Islamic Republic News
Agency.
The importance of pre-conference
Iranian diplomacy is to make sure that it does not
turn into an anti-Iran forum where it will be put
on the defensive by an avalanche of US charges of
Iranian arms being funneled to Iraq, or the
manifestation of an emerging anti-Iran front in
the Middle East.
Iran's decision to attend
is likely due to words of assurance from Egypt,
whose foreign minister has been running the phones
to Iran, as well as by discreet assurances by the
US. These are coupled with public signals, such as
in President George W Bush's television interview
on the US Public Broadcasting Service Charlie
Rose show in which he hinted at direct US-Iran
dialogue.
"The White House is inching
closer and closer to adopting the Baker-Hamilton
report on Iraq that advised engaging Iraq's
neighbors," a Tehran political scientist told this
author in reference to James Baker and Howard
Baker, who co-chaired the Iraq Study Group. "And
the good news is that their tone toward Iran has
improved and everyone likes to know if this is
tactical and momentary or a more profound shift.
Right now it is too early to tell."
Of
course, there are compelling reasons for Iran to
seek a multilateral solution for the intractable
security black hole in Iraq that could spill over
sooner rather than later. Already, Iran is
extremely concerned about the recent spate of
suicide bombings in holy cities in Iraq that have
been hitting closer and closer to revered shrines.
Whereas not long ago the hardline Tehran daily
Kayhan boasted of "calm and stability" in the
eight Shi'ite provinces, today Iran is
substantially less assured about the fate of the
Shi'ite-led political order.
In his
meeting this week with Ahmad Chalabi, the head of
Iraq National Congress, former Iranian president
Ali Akbar Rafsanjani once again blamed the
"foreign occupation" of Iraq as the primary reason
for violence. For sure, Iran will insist in Sharm
al-Sheikh, as it did in the initial security
summit in Baghdad in March, on a timetable for
foreign-troop withdrawal from Iraq.
Yet
Iranian media have been reticent with respect to
the US Congress initiative to commence troop
withdrawal at the end of the year, a measure Bush
has threatened to veto. Iranian policymakers are
grappling with the ramifications of such a
development, that is, whether the power vacuum in
the US will lead to the breakup of Iraq.
This is a vexing question that is
difficult to prognosticate, yet few experts in
Iran are optimistic that the departure of foreign
forces
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