After the talks, Iran starts
talking By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
In the aftermath of the US-Iran dialogue
on Iraq in Baghdad on Monday, Iran's media have
been awash with commentaries by politicians,
experts and editorials offering interpretations of
the immediate and potential long-term significance
of "breaking the big taboo" after nearly 28 years
of non-dialogue.
Hassan Kazemi Qomi,
Iran's veteran diplomat in Baghdad who led Iran's
delegation at the meeting, stated that the
"dialogue was the first step in a process",
expressing Iran's desire for a follow-up
meeting in the near future, a
sentiment reflected by Foreign Minister Manouchehr
Mottaki and other government officials.
Ali Larijani, the head of Supreme National
Security Council and Iran's chief nuclear
negotiator, due to meet the European Union's
Javier Solana shortly, pointed at the connection
of the Baghdad talks and the larger issues on the
US-Iran plate, stating that "the Iraq talks will
influence the nuclear issue".
Ali Akbar
Velayati, a former foreign minister turned
foreign-policy adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah
Ali Khamenei, also interpreted the Baghdad meeting
as positive and told the Mehr news agency that
Iran's presence at the talks "proves the falsity
of American accusations of Iran's instability role
in Iraq".
Yet in light of the negative
reaction of Iraqi Sunni groups and Shi'ite leader
Muqtada al-Sadr, who attacked the meeting as
"useless for the Iraqi people", Iran has somewhat
moderated its expectations of a major leap forward
in US-Iran cooperation in Iraq.
Muqtada's
criticism - that Iran forgot to request the
withdrawal of US forces from Iraq - has met with
cynicism by Tehran's dailies. Thus Manouchehr
Mohammadi, a deputy foreign minister, told the
audience at an international conference on the
Persian Gulf that "we have no shared interests
with America", adding that by participating in the
talks Iran managed to "hurl the ball in the US's
lap".
Mohammadi then clarified that Iran
and the US have only a "shared perspective" on
Iraq, but no "shared interests". Another deputy
foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, told London's
Financial Times, "Let there not be a double
disaster with a disastrous withdrawal ... The only
solution is to end the occupation, and this means
a well-planned strategy."
Ibrahim Yazdi,
the head of the dissident Nehzat-e Azadi
(Liberation Movement), questioned the "official
ambiguity" and called for "transparency in the
dialogue for the sake of public opinion".
According to Yazdi, "It is not right to tell
people that we are not negotiating with America,
and then negotiate. That is verbal acrobatics ...
The fact is, at the present moment both sides are
talking to each other."
Like Yazdi,
Iranian liberals and reformists have uniformly
reacted positively to the Baghdad meeting. For
example, Ahmad Shirzad, a leading member of the
Islamic Participation Front, said the dialogue is
like passing a difficult and tall obstacle. "If
the level of talks increases beyond the
ambassadorial level, then we can be hopeful that
both sides can reach common points and arrive at
agreements on them."
"Changing monologue
to dialogue", reads the headline of a reformist
paper, Shargh, recently resurrected after a
temporary suspension. It states: "Perhaps the most
important result of this talk was the pursuit of a
common strategy toward resolving the major
tensions in the Middle East ... It signaled the
need for cooperation based on common grounds ...
The continuation of these talks can itself to a
large extent reduce or bracket the alternatives of
war or absolute sanctions on the plate of American
warmongers."
The Shargh editorial ends by
optimistically hoping that "perhaps the Baghdad
meeting can be a step for resolving the Lebanon
crisis in the near future with the participation
of Iran, France and other relevant countries".
Hardline groups, on the other hand, have
been weary of the dialogue exceeding the limits
set by Khamenei. Thus Lotfolah Forouzandeh,
associated with the powerful Jamait-e Eesargaran,
demanded that the government publish the details
of the Baghdad meeting, to make sure it did not
surpass the restrictions imposed by the leader.
Hussain Shariatmadari, the publisher of
Kayhan and adviser to President Mahmud
Ahmadinejad, has minimized the significance of the
Baghdad talks by calling it "just a talk".
In contrast, conservative groups have
opted for a middle line between the reformists'
"optimism" and the hardliners' "guarded cynicism".
They say, for example, that the talks might result
in nullifying the 1979 revolution's principles
reflected in the late ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini's comparison of the US and Iran as wolf
and sheep.
Thus Foad Sadeghi, writing on
the website Baztab.com, interpreted the Baghdad
meeting as a "turning point in the third decade of
the Islamic Revolution". According to Sadeghi, the
United States' willingness to engage in diplomatic
interaction with Iran means that "the scenario of
regime change is closed and the substitution of
soft power for the hard-power approach toward
Iran".
The fact that the US government
disbanded the anti-Iran "Iran Syria Policy and
Operation Group" right after the Baghdad meeting
has been hailed as a positive development by all
Iranian pundits.
Still, various Iranian
politicians and analysts continue to complain
about the dual behavior of the US in Iraq,
accusing the White House of not having sufficient
confidence in the current Baghdad government and
not showing sufficient goodwill by releasing the
Iranians held by US forces in Iraq.
According to a member of the newly formed
Council on Foreign Relations, the US "expects to
be the head chef and others act as their waiters.
No one should play the waiter role for the US."
But that is one of Iran's present concerns, in
light of the reaction in the Arab press accusing
Iran of turning into a US partner in Iraq.
Reactions in Parliament As
expected, the reaction of members of Iran's
unicameral legislature, the Majlis, mirrors the
factional-ideological vagaries above-mentioned,
although the notion that the talks with the US are
in line with Iran's "national interests" has been
a common theme.
Hussain Sobhaninia, a
senior member of the Majlis, welcomed the talks
and referred to "the common US and Iranian
interests in connection with stability and
tranquility in Iraq". Another member, Mohammad
Reza Mir Taj ol-Dinin, supported Iran's initiative
of a "trilateral security mechanism" as useful not
only for Iraq but also the entire region.
Yet some Majlis members warned that the US
might exploit these talks to "create partners" for
its debacle in Iraq. Several members of the
Foreign Policy Committee, such as Kazem Jalali and
Falahat Pisheh, welcomed the US administration's
late embrace of the Iraq Study Group's
recommendation for diplomatic engagement of Iran,
and at the same time cautioned that the ultimate
aim of such talks is to make sure that Iraqi
people "decide their own fate" and that "Iraq does
not turn into a base for extra-regional forces".
Another legislator, Abbaspour Tehrani,
affiliated with the majority Osollgaran faction,
stated that it is a mistake to consider the
Baghdad dialogue as "the removal of a wall of
distrust" between Iran and the US. He was echoed
by Hassan Seyedabadi, who maintained that Israel
is the only country with which the Islamic
Republic is fundamentally averse toward diplomatic
relations and the problems with relations with the
US are resolvable.
The dominant sentiment
in the Majlis thus appears to be one of overriding
optimism, that a terrific momentum has been
generated on the long-dormant frontier of
relations with the US, and both sides need to
consider carefully the necessary follow-up steps
to deepen the process and reach "the diplomatic
level proper".
"If the level of talks
reach the point of discussing the US's and Iran's
interests, then we can call it diplomacy," a
member of the Majlis has been quoted in the papers
as saying.
But will it? The United States
is now pressing ahead with a fourth United Nations
Security Council resolution against Iran over its
nuclear program, urging tougher sanctions, and the
issue is how this will impact the new opening
shown by the US with respect to Iraq and regional
security.
Kaveh L Afrasiabi,
PhD, is the author of After Khomeini: New
Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview
Press) and co-author of "Negotiating Iran's
Nuclear Populism", Brown Journal of World Affairs,
Volume XII, Issue 2, Summer 2005, with Mustafa
Kibaroglu. He also wrote "Keeping Iran's nuclear
potential latent", Harvard International Review,
and is author of Iran's Nuclear
Program: Debating Facts Versus Fiction.
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