A careful approach to US-Iran dialogue on Iraq
OPENING A dialogue with Iran and its regional ally Syria is one of the key recommendations of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, echoing the sentiments of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who suggests to focus less on Iraq's internal problems and more on the regional dimension to de-escalate Iraq's crisis. Given the ability of Iran and Syria to influence events in Iraq and their interest in avoiding chaos in Iraq, the United States should try to engage them constructively.
To achieve this, the report recommends a mix of incentives and disincentives, the main leverage being the threat of Iraq's disintegration and its spill over implications for its neighbors. The Bush administration should shelf its misgivings about dialogue with Iran and follow the report's advice of using Afghanistan as the role model, seeing how Tehran and Washington cooperated against the Taliban and its replacement by a government of national unity led by Hamid Kerzai.
Iran's reaction to the report has been largely positive. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki have insisted that the key to solving Iraq's problems is the withdrawal of foreign forces. However, putting a crucial nuance on Iran's position, Ali Larijani, head of the powerful Supreme National Security Council, recently told a regional conference in Dubai that Iran supports a gradual withdrawal of US forces, in veiled recognition of the dangerous power vacuum following any immediate US pullout; the latter point was impressed on Tehran by Iraq's president, Jalal Talabani, in his recent visit to Tehran.
Yet, in contrast to Talabani's categorical rejection of the Iraq panel's report as an interference in Iraq's sovereignty, many in Iran and the Arab world are apt to see the report's singular emphasis on Iraq's national unity and lack of any concessions to the Kurdish-backed idea of a loose federation, behind the Kurdish objections to the report. According to a Tehran University political scientist, the report's main problem is that with the exception of accession to the World Trade Organization, the report's other incentives for Iran's cooperation are actually negative incentives and that means "Washington wants to barter on the cheap" with Iran.
Yet another potential problem is the nuclear standoff, in light of the mild sanctions adopted by the Security Council last week, which, given Iran's defiance of its nuclear demands, will likely isolate Iran diplomatically precisely at a time when there is a growing sentiment to engage it on Iraq as proposed by the panel; implicitly, the UN sanction resolution, which calls on Iran to suspend its enrichment program by endorsing the international incentive package obligates the United States to negotiate with Iran.
"The proposed sanctions amount to slaps on thewrist and as long as they have not escalated, loc ally speaking, should not preclude a US-Iran dialogue on the dangerous Iraq crisis," said the same Tehran political scientist.
In his initial comments on the report, President George W. Bush stated that Iran and Syria must stop helping extremists and commit to helping Iraq's fledging government before any talks, thus hinting at a de-linking of Iraq and nuclear issues. This has been reiterated by the State Department's Sean McCormack, who stated that the Khalilzad option, i.e., the longstanding US proposal for dialogue between Iran and the US ambassador to Baghdad, is still open.
But, notwithstanding the conspiratorial mindset in the Middle East, the proposed US-Iran dialogue on Iraq could backfire for both countries if the Arab Sunni world suspects a Tehran-Washington gerrymandering of Iraq. Cooperation through tacit consent, whereby Iran uses its influence on the Shi'ite groups, such as the powerful Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, to shun violence and embrace the panel's idea of national reconciliation, is a more prudent approach.
Instead of bilateral diplomacy, a multilateralist approach, which builds on the past experience of the UN-sponsored "Iraq and its neighbors" grouping, which brought US and Iranian diplomats around the same table, is called for. Iran has reacted positively to Iraq's call for a regional conference, and this is more advantageous to the idea of an international conference to bring on Iraq's neighbours including Iran and Syria and to discuss all of Middle East issues considered inter-connected to one another (e.g., the Arab-Israeli conflict). The problem with the latter approach is that it confuses the desperate need for a comprehensive solution for the Middle East problems with the means of their delivery. Rather, simultaneous yet discretely separate micro-steps vis-a-vis Iraq and other concurrent crises have a better chance of success given the internal root causes of Iraq's crisis sui generis.
Kaveh Afrasiabi is a former consultant to the UN's Program of Dialogue Among Civilizations and director of the organization Global Interfaith Peace. 
