The US and Iranian ambassadors in Baghdad met for four hours earlier today, hosted by Iraqi PM Nuri al-Maliki in his office in the Baghdad Green Zone.
This was the highest-level bilateral (trilateral) meeting between officials of Iran and the US since Washington broke diplomatic ties with Teheran in 1980. The length of today’s meeting was a welcome indicator that some serious– if still necessarily preliminary– diplomatic business got done.
In that report linked to above, Reuters’ Ross Colvin wrote that both sides afterwards described the meeting as “positive.”
He wrote that the Iranian ambassador, Hassan Kazemi-Qomi, called the meeting “a first step in negotiations between these two sides” and said Tehran would seriously consider an Iraqi invitation for further discussions.
Colvin wrote that K-Q’s American counterpart, Ryan Crocker,
said he had been less interested in arranging further meetings than laying out Washington’s case that Shi’ite Iran is arming, funding and training Shi’ite militias in Iraq, a charge Iran denies.
Colvin wrote that Kazemi-Qomi said Iran
saw positive steps in the talks.
“Some problems have been raised and studied and I think this was a positive step … In the political field, the two sides agreed to support and strengthen the Iraqi government, which was another positive item achieved in these talks,” he said.
He said Iran had offered to help train and arm Iraq’s security forces, presently the job of the U.S. military…
Crocker said he would refer to Washington a proposal by the Iranians for a mechanism with Iranian, U.S. and Iraqi participation to coordinate Iraqi security matters.
He said he had told the Iranians they must end their support for the militias, stop supplying them with explosives and ammunition and rein in the activities of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Qods Force in Iraq.
The Iranians had rejected the allegations but did not respond in detail. In turn, they had criticized the “occupying” U.S. military’s training and equipping of the new Iraqi army, saying it was “inadequate to the challenges faced”.
… In a brief address to the delegations before the start of the talks, Maliki said Iraq would not be a launchpad for any attacks on neighboring states, an apparent reference to Iranian fears of a U.S. attack. It would also not brook any regional interference in its affairs, he added.
Colvin noted that the talks, “come as U.S. warships hold war games in the Gulf and after Tehran said it had uncovered spy networks on its territory run by Washington and its allies.”
The talks also, of course (though Colvin didn’t mention this) come as the region-spanning tensions over both Iran’s nuclear-engineering program and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are running high. For my part, I find it very hard indeed to see how the US-Iraq-Iran imbroglio can be sustainably defused unless those other components of what I have called the “perfect storm” of three concurrent and linked crises in the Middle East can also be put on the path to sustainable resolution…
But still, to have these two significant governments at last apparently talking seriously about shared concerns in Iraq, rather than engaging in an open shooting war there or anywhere else, is a huge blessing for all of humankind, and especially for the long-suffering residents of Iraq and the rest of the Middle East.
Let’s just first of all, all say a big thanks for that.
I have a few more comments on today’s developments:
(1) The role of the Iraqi government in the emerging US-Iranian negotiations (I guess it is still too soon to call this a US-Iranian “relationship”?)
But the Maliki government’s role in this is intriguing. Obviously, when Pres. Bush made the decision to invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein’s regime, one of his key goals was to install a reliably pro-US government there. Maliki emerged as PM as a result of an electoral process that was completely dominated by the US. But the demographic and political realities of Iraq meant that any use of anything approaching a “fair” electoral process there always meant that the product of such a process would be a leadership much more responsive to the urgings of “brotherly” and neighboring Iran than to those from distant, and very “foreign”, Washington.
How on earth could the Bushites ever have expected anything different? (Because they always systematically blocked out any input into their decisionmaking from objective scholars and analysts who actually knew something about Iraq, is how. But we don’t need to revisit that here.)
So now, we start to see some of the diplomatic results of that.
It is notable that today’s talks– and presumably, the continuing diplomatic process that we can now expect will flow from them– are being described as “hosted by” Maliki. Okay, he is still to a large degree the “captive” of the US forces, there in the Green Zone. But these days, the Americans may well need him– to provide a veneer of political legitimacy to their presence in Iraq– just as much as, if not more than, he needs them (to, among other things, protect him from the wrath of an Iraqi citizenry that is very fed-up with the fact he has been able able to deliver almost nothing of any value to them…)
It is notable too that, at a time when the political elite in the US is abuzz with discussions of Maliki’s many claimed “shortcomings” as Iraq’s PM, the Iranian negotiator was saying that the Iranian government wants to give the the Maliki government more support, including through the provision of military and security-force training– in a move that seems couched as a thinly veiled criticism of what the US has been doing in this field up until now.
(2) The exchange of accusations between the US and Iran.
Crocker trotted out the US’s very well-rehearsed litany of accusations of Iran’s unjustified “meddling” in Iraq. All of which are, of course, particularly rich, coming as they do from a power that sent troops, fighter-bombers, and cruise missiles halfway round the world to intervene extremely illegitimately in Iraq!
But the Iranians also have their own, very numerous, accusations regartding the US’s many– and generally much better documented– hostile acts and declarations against them.
These include Congress’s funding of regime-change activities; the Pentagon’s despatch of an additional large naval task force to the waters very near Iran’s coast, and their conduct of some large-scale military exercizes there; the US forces’ recent arrests of five Iranian diplomats in Erbil, northern Iraq… And most recently, the accusations that Teheran’s Intelligence Ministry made last Saturday that it had,
“succeeded in finding, recognizing and confronting some spy networks of infiltrating elements from the Iraqi occupiers in west, southwest and central Iran… These spy networks were guided by the intelligence services of the occupiers and were supported by some influential Iraqi groups.”
The Iranian news agency IRNA promised that more details of this accusation would be forthcoming “in the next few days.”
No indication was given there whether these “spy networks of infiltrating elements” were connected at all with the bitterly anti-mullah Iranian dissident organization the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, which has some 3,800 fighters concentrated in Camp Ashraf, which is around 60 km north of Baghdad (and 100 km west of the Iranian border.)
The US has formally designated the MEK as a terrorist organization. But in early April, CNN was reporting that, “The U.S. military… regularly escorts MEK supply runs between Baghdad and its base, Camp Ashraf.” The reporter there did not specify what these “supplies” were, though he quoted the camp’s MEK leader as saying that what was involved was “procurement of logistical needs.” As third-country nationals in a country under military occupation, the occupying power has a responsibility to ensure that the MEK members’ basic humanitarian needs are met– but certainly not their need for “logistics”, whatever that term might cover… And especially not, given that the MEK as as an organization is still designated as a “foreign terrorist organization.”
There have been various reports of other, non-MEK, Iraq-based and US- and british-backed saboteurs undertaking acts of violence and other hostile actions inside Iran in recent months, too.
The CNN reporter wrote in April that Shirwan al-Wa’eli, Iraq’s national security minister, had said,
“We gave this organization [the MEK] a six-month deadline to leave Iraq, and we informed the Red Cross…And presumably, our friends the Americans will respect our decision and they will not stay on Iraqi land.”
I found it interesting that in today’s press briefing, Amb. Kazemi-Qomi made no mention of the MEK– or indeed, of any of the accusations that Iran has about anti-Iranian actions being undertaken or supported by the US government, whether from Iraq or from elsewhere. Rather than getting drawn into endless rounds of reciprocal accusations, K-Q seemed more intent on being “statesmanlike”, and on focusing on the forward-looking agenda regarding his government’s negotiations with the US– an agenda that Crocker and most of the rest of the Bushites are seem noticeably reluctant to think about or talk about in public.
(And regarding the MEK, the Iranians are probably more intent on trying to work bilaterally with the Maliki government to get the MEK camp or camps dismantled. So they must have been pleased to hear Maliki say that Iraq “would not be a launchpad for any attacks on neighboring states”.)
3. The further agenda for the US and Iran talks, regarding Iraq.
This is huge. But most Bushites, as noted above, are probably still very reluctant to start to address it. This is an issue that is still very problematic and divisive within the administration. Gates, the uniformed military, and Rice are all now probably more or less united in realizing that,
(a) Washington has to find a way to negotiate a substantial US troop withdrawal from Iraq, starting at the very latest in early 2008;
(b) To do this, including Iran as one major party in the negotiation is unavoidable; and
(c) In this context, a military attack on Iran is out of the questions; and probably, in addition, the current level of tension in the US-Iran relationship needs to be de-escalated.
Within the Republican Party– and indeed, within the broader US political elite, as well– the first of those three propositions now has considerable support. But its corollaries (b) and (c) still don’t, by any means, either in the GOP or in the broader political elite!
Hence, presumably, the need the Bushites see for extreme wariness in proceeding with this negotiation.
4. The US-Iranian agenda beyond Iraq.
As I mentioned above, the Bushites’ policies conflict harshly with those of Teheran in other areas, too, primarily regarding the nuclear issue and Arab-Israeli issues. It seems the “ground-rules” for today’s meeting in Baghdad had been firmly established by the US side as being that the discussions could only deal with matters directly related to Iraq.
Hey, who knows what the three of them might all have talked about inside the room there? Maybe we’ll never wholly know. But anyway, in his remarks after the meeting, K-Q stuck to the agreed script and didn’t mention any non-Iraq-related subject.
However, as I noted above, it will certainly be very hard for the US to get very much of what it wants to get from the Iranians regarding Iraq unless it is prepared to at least start dealing with some of Iran’s very sharp concerns in other fields.
Including, if Washington’s desire US really is for an orderly and substantial US troop withdrawal from Iraq– then what on earth is the Iranians’ interest in that?? Because now, the Iranians have the US troops in Iraq just exactly where they want them: dispersed, stretched out; vulnerable– 160,000-plus sitting ducks who are Teheran’s present guarantee that the US will undertake no military attack against Iran, and also, that it will rein the Israelis from trying anything similar.
Jimmy Carter only had to think about the fate of 52 US hostages to the will of the revolutionary Iranians. Now, George Bush has quite voluntarily and recklessly sent 3,000 times that number of hostages to the same fate…
No wonder that some administration insiders are now talking about a post-surge “Plan B” that would remove substantial numbers of the US troops from Iraq, and concentrate the remainder within only three or four, presumably very well-guarded perimeters.
But why should anyone believe the Iranians would be willing to let that happen so long as they continue to be subjected to all kinds of other hostile acts and declarations by the Americans?
So for the Iraq part of the US-Iran negotiation to work requires, at the very least, that the two sides reach agreement on a broader pact of ending direct hostilities between them.
How far-reaching might such an agreement be? We don’t know yet. But one thing that seems clear to me is that with every month that passes, the Iranian side of this complex balance is becoming stronger, and the US side weaker. Thus the longer the Bushites delay the conclusion of a non-agggression pact with Teheran, the broader will be the gains that Teheran ends up making.
5. Other regional and international actors.
Of course the US and Iran are not the only foreign (non-Iraqi) governments who have an intense interest in containing and ending the current state of insecurity in Iraq. In particular, I note that in the Arab world, all the Arab governments have a very strong interest in both
(a) Seeing the restoration of political stability and public security inside Iraq, before Iraq-incubated Sunni extremism becomes an even more threatening force than it already is, for all of them; and
(b) Not seeing the affairs of the Middle East being regulated entirely between these two non-Arab governments, in Washington and Teheran.
When I was in Egypt and Jordan in February, those were two very strong themes I heard again and again from my Arab friends and colleagues there– at the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, and elsewhere.
(I note that Israel and Turkey also have certain interests regarding the the US-Iranian-Iraqi nexus. Turkey’s have mainly to do with the situation in the north, and can probably be fairly well accomodated in the context of improving US-Iran relations. Israel’s– as understood by the current government there– depend fairly strongly on there not being any improvement in US-Iran relations… Just the opposite! Tough luck for them, then, if they have to sit back and watch while US-Iran ties improve.)
Back to the Arab states, though. I guess a big question in my mind is whether goals (a) and (b) above can both be satisfactorily reached. I would say they could– provided the Iranians are prepared to do do some fairly clever and sure-footed diplomacy to set at ease the minds of Arab elites in places like Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia.
Anyway, for any stabilization project inside Iraq to succeed will require the active involvement of, at the very least, the Saudis, Jordanians, and Syrians, all of whom have various fingers in the Iraqi pie at present.
… So, bottom line on the US-Iranian diplomacy: Yes, today’s meeting was a great breakthrough… But considerable further diplomatic work remains to be done.
Let’s all hope and pray the leaders in all the relevant capitals are prepared to do that work. As Winston Churchill once memorably said, “Jaw-jaw is better than war-war.” That was never truer than today. The lives of Iraqis (and American service members) will continue to be lost and devastated in quite unacceptable numbers until the diplomats– supported, I hope, by a swelling movement of citizens in all the countries concerned in favor of much more “jaw-jaw” and less “war-war”– can get their act together and definiteively defuse this very, very harmful situation.