US-Iran Talks — and a partnership?

US-Iran watchers are holding their collective breath in hopes that the talks between America and Iran bear fruit.
I’m guardedly impressed that the talks are happening. President Bush has belatedly adopted what he had previously rejected – a core recommendation of the Baker-Hamilton commission to talk to Iraq’s neighbors.
Is the switch borne of “realism” or “desperation?” And on whose part? Does it matter? It at least seems the insubordinate Cheney-Abrams-neocon wing of the Administration has been leashed – for now. Condi Rice also seems to have abandoned her previous nonsense about not wanting to talk to Iran, lest “diplomacy” might “legitimize” the Iranian system.
Similar observation for the Iranian side: It’s perhaps as difficult, if not more, for Iran to talk to the US, given that so much of the Revolution’s fury and subsequent dynamics have been driven by suspicions of American intentions and actions. The ghosts of 1953 still loom large. Repeatedly, for the past 20 years, Iranian figures who floated ideas to talk to America had their ears pinned back, beginning (it is long forgotten) when Iran’s current Supreme Leader (Ayatollah Khamenehi) once advocated such talks when he was President.
That Iran’s political “weather had changed” dramatically was confirmed when former Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati gave a long and extraordinarily candid interview ten days ago on Iran’s state TV channel. Now the foreign policy advisor to Leader Khamenehi, Velayati addressed concerns that America was both accusing Iran of causing trouble in Iraq and yet asking for Iran’s help in resolving Iraq’s troubles. Velayati also warned his compatriots of the “mirage” of seeing in the talks the solution to all of Iran’s problems, even as he also chided those Iranian “neocons” who saw dark conspiracies afoot — it’s not that “complicated.”
Bottom line: Velayati confirmed that Iran would participate in talks with America, provided they take “place between two counties in equal positions, without any preconditions, claims, rudeness or negative propaganda.”
US-Iran tensions of course have been running high from multiple sources, including nuclear questions, accusations of Iran supporting all manner of contagion in Iraq, the continued mysterious detentions of five Iranian “diplomats” by the US in Iraq (over Iraqi objections) and horrendous arrests of Iranian-American scholars in Iran.
Even more ominously, we have two US aircraft carrier battle groups again circling their rudders in the cramped Persian Gulf, Iran’s front door, a hair-trigger situation that even a curious editorial in the Kabul Times (friendly to America) characterized as “greatly alarming.”
Last Tuesday, ABC News ran a story claiming that President Bush had signed off on a CIA “black ops” order to destabilize Iran. I now wonder if this report was leaked by those wishing to sabotage the talks.
Unfazed, Iran is still coming to the table.
On Saturday, by contrast, the Boston Globe ran a scoop reporting that the US State Department had disbanded , a special unit that had been set up to orchestrate aggressive action against Iran and Syria – e.g. “regime change.” (Hat tip to Christiane in a thread below for catching this intriguing story for us.)
Yet despite these and other tensions, I share in the restrained optimism about the prospects for these talks. Both sides are well represented by multi-lingual diplomats, with rare experience with low-key contacts with the other side. America’s Ryan Crocker has already received considerable praise. Iran’s team includes its current Ambassador to Iraq, Hassan Kazemi Qomi, and two key Iran observers of Iraqi developments, Reza Amiri Moghaddam and Hossein Amir Abdolhayan.
So what’s to talk about?
I’ve already touched on a long list of tensions and problems needing discussion, even if confined just to Iraq. Yet I offer now an original essay by R.K. Ramazani that focuses on one one area where there should indeed be profound US-Iran common interest and cooperation: al-Qaeda.
I had a hand in pulling the quotes together for this essay, including several that to our knowledge have not appeared elsewhere in the Western media. America’s concerns about al-Qaeda should be obvious, even as many critics scorn Bush’s recent Coast Guard speech wherein he focused on al-Qaeda in Iraq as a key reason for us to stay in Iraq.
Lesser known in the west are the many reasons why Iran too has great reasons for bitterly opposing al-Qaeda.

“Abu Musab Zarqawi, the late al-Qaida operative responsible for the decapitation of Americans and other captives in Iraq, launched a merciless crusade against the Shia. Branding them as a “lurking snake,” a “malicious scorpion,” Zarqawi considered the Shia as an “insurmountable obstacle” to al-Qaeda’s global plans….
Zarqawi declared “total war” on the Shia and Iranians on Sept. 14, 2005. His minions catalyzed open sectarian Shia-Sunni warfare by destroying the Shia shrine at Samarra on Feb. 22, 2006. Since then, millions of Iraqis – of all sects – have been killed, exiled or driven from their homes….

Ayman al-Zawahiri, #2 in al-Qaeda and reputed chief strategist, has similarly taken aim at Shias and Iran:

Al-Zawahiri’s May 5th (2007) tape included an intensified al-Qaeda’s verbal attack on the Shia, Bush and Iran, in anticipation of U.S.-Iran talks. Apart from incendiary insults aimed at Shia belief and practice, al-Zawahiri chided Iran for having given up its slogan “America, the Great Satan” [for] the slogan “”America, the Closest Partner.“

Talk about an insult (!) — yet one with more than a grain of truth in it, from al-Qaeda’s perspective.
Unreported in the west, Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad replied with a full-bore blast aimed at al-Zawahiri:

“Why do you, who want to kill Americans, kill innocent people and place bombs in the [Iraqi] market place?… On behalf of all the women and children in Asia, Europe and America, who have been victims of al-Qaida terrorists, I wish for you and your terrorist group hellfire, and would gladly sacrifice my life to annihilate you.”

Strange thing for an alleged closet ally of Al-Qaeda to say, eh?
Anyway, if I say so myself, do read the whole essay here.
And indeed, let’s hope, as the essay concludes, that “cooler heads will prevail.”
Fitting that today is Memorial Day in America. May that be a sobering reminder of the stakes.