Page 1 of 2 US, IRAN
PREPARE TO TALK Looking beyond
the limits By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
On May 28, US and Iranian ambassadors to
Iraq will hold the first bilateral dialogue
between the two countries in more than a quarter
of century. The last such occasion was in 1980 in
Algiers, which led to the release of US Embassy
hostages in Iran and, in return, the US agreed to
respect Iran's sovereign rights.
After
that, the sole "unofficial" dialogue was
spearheaded by
Ronald
Reagan's national security advisor, Robert
McFarlane, who made a surprise visit to Tehran in
1986 in connection with what became known as the
Iran-Contra affair; Iran's revolutionary leader,
ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, consented to that
visit in light of Iran's pressing demands
regarding the Iran-Iraq war. Khomeini's decision
is often cited by Iranian pundits as clear
evidence of his realpolitik pragmatism, more
vividly reflected in his acceptance of a United
Nations ceasefire resolution that silenced the
guns after a bloody eight-year conflict with Iraq,
which is currently embroiled in a seemingly
worsening insecurity epidemic.
Much has
happened since then, including several contacts in
multilateral settings, such as the "six-plus-two"
meetings at the UN on Afghanistan, and the
post-Taliban conference in Bonn in which Iran's
outgoing ambassador to the UN, Mohammad Javad
Zarif, played a key role in persuading the Afghan
factions to accept a unity formula.
Today,
US officials cite US-Iran cooperation on
Afghanistan as a model, potentially capable of
being replicated for Iraq. Their views are not
necessarily shared by the Iranians, who rightly
complain that Iran was labeled part of an "axis of
evil" by President George W Bush right after the
Bonn summit, along with Iraq and North Korea.
This was hardly a positive follow-up, even
though through the prism of Washington's
neo-conservatives, intent on using US victories in
Iran's neighborhood as a springboard for regime
change in Tehran, it made perfect sense.
With the mounting troubles in both Iraq
and Afghanistan, Washington's new realism,
reflected in the bipartisan Iraq Study Group (ISG)
report, is to defer any dream of regime change
and, instead, engage Tehran's ruling clergy over
stability in Iraq and the whole Persian Gulf
region.
Six months later, the Bush
administration is finally practicing the
recommendations of the ISG, hoping to achieve
tangible benefits by holding direct talks led by
its seasoned, Farsi-speaking diplomat, Chester
Crocker, who was once the US's consul in the
southern Iranian city of Khoramshahr.
This
is indeed good news for the Iraqi government,
which has formally requested the meeting,
confirming yet again Iran's influence in Iraq.
"The US is a major player and so is Iran, and
there will be room for some substantial
discussions for the stability of Iraq," Iraq's
Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari stated. At an Iraq
security summit in Egypt last month, Zebari warned
against a premature withdrawal of US forces,
cautioning that the question of a timetable
depends on the preparedness of Iraqi forces to
take on the responsibility of maintaining security
for the whole country.
Yet, as a new study
by Britain's Chatham House aptly indicates, the
Iraqi government is actually on the "verge of
collapse" and is largely irrelevant to
developments in many parts of the country. The
study refers to not one but several "civil wars"
plaguing Iraq, and has a bleak assessment of the
prospects for any qualitative improvement in the
security situation.
Such negative reports
add an even greater urgency to the dialogue
between the US and Iran, given their common
interests in maintaining the present Iraqi
government, although the Iranians sense a shifting
mood on the US's part and Iran's Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei recently accused the US of
"plotting to overthrow the Iraqi government".
Khamenei's fear is increasingly shared by Iraqi
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. According to a
recent report in the Washington Post, "There is
growing concern in Baghdad that Washington is
developing a 'Plan B' that involves both hitting
Iran and ousting Maliki."
Thus, one of
Iran's main objectives is to make sure that there
is no substantive change of heart on the part of
the US government regarding the viability of the
Shi'ite-led government in Baghdad. The US, on the
other hand, is soliciting Iran's cooperation
against the insurgents and with respect to the
increasingly quarreling Shi'ite factions.
The meeting in Baghdad is the culmination
of arduous preparations begun last year when the
former US envoy to Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzad,
broke the news that he had the blessing of the
White House for a face-to-face meeting with
his
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