Iran-Iraq ties show US the
way By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
One would not know it by confining oneself
to the news headlines, bespeaking of a widening
gap between Iran and the United States that
seemingly runs the gamut, from Iraq to Lebanon and
Israel and the Palestinian territories, to the
nuclear row.
Yet despite a poisonous air
filled with accusations and counter-accusations by
both sides, for example, Iran complaining of the
US's disinformation campaign behind its successful
rallying of the United Nations Security Council to
impose new sanctions, and the US renewing its
allegations of Iran's armed support for Iraqi
Shi'ites and Palestinian Islamists, there is still
room for optimism. This is in regard to the
prospects for US-Iran cooperation on a number of
key issues, including Iraq's security, the threat
of the Taliban and al-Qaeda, and narcotics
trafficking.
With respect to Iraq, Iranian
President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, on
returning
to Iran from his historic trip to Baghdad this
week, has reiterated Tehran's readiness to engage
in a fourth round of direct dialogue with the US
on Iraq's security.
Although no specific
date has been set as of this writing, we can
safely assume that barring unforeseen
developments, US and Iranian diplomats in Baghdad
will soon be sitting around the same table again.
However, for this to succeed beyond the mere
symbolic importance attached to the engagement of
two rival powers, both sides may need to step down
from their negative, label-rich, rhetoric.
The facts on the ground in Iraq,
indicating a fragile truce between warring
factions, ongoing violence and potential for even
more deadly violence if political compromises are
not worked out, dictate a cooling of rhetoric and,
perhaps, adoption of a moratorium in this regard.
From Iran's vantage point, although
Ahmadinejad has called on the US and other
occupying forces to leave Iraq, there is no great
desire for an ill-planned, instant withdrawal of
US forces that could well leave a dangerous
security vacuum, in light of the present
unpreparedness of the Iraqi army and police to
maintain order on their own. Iraq's descent into
dangerous lawlessness, ripe for growing terrorism,
may follow if the timing is not right for US troop
withdrawal and without due consultation with
Iraq's neighbors.
Simultaneously, as far
as Tehran is concerned, Ahmadinejad's Baghdad
visit has underscored Tehran's regional importance
and has added weight to its diplomacy toward the
US and others. This even though the US has managed
to deflate this to some extent by pulling off a
big one against Iran at the United Nations
Security Council this week in the form of a third
round of sanctions on Iran over its nuclear
program.
Iraqi Shi'ite and Kurdish leaders
meeting with Ahmadinejad have urged Iran to avoid
turning Iraq into a theater of revenge for the
US's nuclear coercions, yet few experts predict
that Iran will refrain from utilizing its leverage
in Iraq against the US, given Tehran's dearth of
leverage against the superpower in other areas.
The trick for Iran is, and has been for a
while, essentially the question of how to make
proportionate use of this leverage in Iraq without
letting it get out of control or
counter-productive with respect to Iran's overall
foreign policy objectives.
This issue is
entwined with another concern relating to the US:
how can it simultaneously seek Iran's isolation
because of the nuclear standoff while it needs to
engage Iran on Iraq and Afghanistan? If anything,
Baghdad's red carpet for Ahmadinejad indicates
that America's policy of isolating Iran is not
welcomed there - rightly so, given the myriad
trade, economic, energy and even security benefits
of closer, healthier Iraq-Iran ties for the
beleaguered post-Saddam Hussein regime in today's
Iraq.
Ahmadinejad's main accomplishment
during this trip was, indeed, in the economic
area, with several new agreements signed and some
old ones, such as those dealing with oil pipeline
and highway construction, brought back to life.
This signals a new chapter in neighborly relations
between the countries. Prior to Ahmadinejad's
visit, Tehran's mayor visited Baghdad and reached
an agreement with Baghdad's mayor regarding
municipality-to-municipality cooperation. Such
sub-national forms of cooperation can already be
seen aplenty, especially in southern Iraq, and
reflect a pattern of growing interdependence
between the two countries.
At the same
time, there is a good deal of apprehension in
Tehran about the US's support for armed Sunni
groups and tribes that may sow the seeds of a
future civil war, one important reason why Shi'ite
militias continue to look to Iran for "preventive
defense" against a future Sunni backlash aimed at
reversing the post-Saddam fortunes of Iraqi
Shi'ites.
Still, irrespective of serious
disagreements and points of conflicting interests,
the shared or coinciding interests between Tehran
and Washington remain formidable. For one thing,
Tehran opposes Turkey's incursions inside northern
Iraq against Kurdish rebels and yet has no
illusion that it was neither Baghdad's outcry nor
Tehran's misgivings that led Ankara to
shortcircuit its latest operation, but rather US
pressure backed by the US's military presence in
Iraq. Thus, given Iran's inherent interest in a
unified Iraq, the mere threat of Turkey's
dismemberment of parts of Iraq raises questions
about the protean value of the US's countervailing
influence that keeps Turkey at bay.
None
of the above means, however, that Iran is not
serious about the need for a US timetable for
troop withdrawal. On the contrary, Iran is
convinced that there are serious negative
dimensions or consequences regarding the US
military presence, for example, inciting Arab
nationalist feelings and violence, that in turn
call for a change of US policy geared toward
eventual departure from Iraq.
Yet, with or
without a timetable, the US military in Iraq needs
to fully reckon with the fact that Iran's
influence in the country, admittedly huge, is
there to stay, in light of Iran's proximity and
religious and historical connections, and the
sooner the US adjusts its anti-Iran policy in
favor of a strategic accommodation with Iran's
regional power and clout, particularly in Iraq,
the better. Without doubt, Iran will be
disinclined toward mischief inside Iraq if it has
more confidence about the US's intentions toward
Iran. Unfortunately, it is precisely here that US
transparency is missing and, instead, the US's
motives and intentions with regard to Iran seem
embedded in a thick syrup of ambivalence.
Perhaps it is too late for the lame-duck
President George W Bush to achieve even a
mini-breakthrough with Iran and that is why a
number of US pundits have recently talked about
the next US president's Iran policy, with some
experts calling for "engagement" and even
"dialogue without preconditions".
But the
perception of the Bush administration's impotence
on Iran policy may be exaggerated. There are still
several precious months left, during which the
White House may well ramp up its confrontational
approach to Iran, instead of heeding the advice of
its allies in Baghdad to engage the Iranians.
Hopefully, this will not happen and the US
may realize that in spite of his colorful rhetoric
against the US in his recent Baghdad visit,
Ahmadinejad is likely to engage in critical
dialogue with the US simply because of the
pressing demands of Iran's own national interests.
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.
(Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing .)
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
