US willing to talk to Iran

The Obama administration is being forced to fast-track its search for Iranian goodwill as it looks for ways to defeat the dangerous jihadists of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil), who have captured a large part of the Sunni corridor to the west and north of Iraq.

There are huge potential benefits of US cooperation with Iran. They include reaching a nuclear deal and ending the sanctions, working together to build a more stable Iraq, taking up the old Iranian offer of help in Afghanistan and even discuss how to bring the fighting in Syria to an end. But there is no hint of any such Grand Bargain in the air as both the US and Iran are anxious to keep each topic contained in its own box. There has been slow and measured progress at the nuclear talks with the P5+1 (US, Britain, France, Russia, China plus Germany) with Iran, but this negotiation has been restricted to the nuclear issue only and any widening of the dialogue has been ruled out by both Washington and Tehran.

So it is a surprise that any cooperation or even joint action between the US and Iran can be considered, but they both need to support their mutual ally in Baghdad. Both Iran and the US see the danger of Iraq’s further disintegration and any further rise of Isil as a political power as totally unacceptable.

US President Barack Obama has made American action contingent on Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki taking steps to broaden his Shiite-dominated government, which is a position that would lead to a more inclusive Iraq, and offer an opportunity to the more constitutionally minded Sunni politicians to return to backing the government. The Iranians would be crucial in imposing such a shift on their ally Al Maliki. They have been instrumental in shoring up Al Maliki’s government and may have welcomed his sectarian preference for his own Shiite community, but the radical Sunni backlash is so dangerous for the regional stability that Iran will need to help change Al Maliki’s policies. As it starts talks with Iran, the US also faces the real danger of alienating Saudi Arabia, its major ally in the region. Therefore it is no surprise that the US is discussing a massive new arms sales package to Saudi Arabia of around $100-$150 billion (Dh367.8-Dh551.7 billion), in an attempt to reassure the Saudis.

Iran reaches out

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is a very conservative politician, but one who wants to end his country’s isolation. He disagrees completely with his predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who relished Iran’s rogue status and hatred of all things American. But just because he favours normalising diplomatic links does not make Rouhani a liberal like former president Mohammad Khatami, whose reforming brand of religious leadership dominated during his presidency from 1997 to 2005, when Khatami made several offers to help the US, but had the misfortune to be talking to George W. Bush in Washington. So the Iranian attempt to break through fell on deaf ears.

In 2001, just after the 9/11 attacks on America, Khatami’s government provided extensive military, intelligence and political support to the US military during their campaign against the Taliban in Afghanistan. Jim Dobbins, US president George W. Bush’s special envoy to Afghanistan at the time, said Iran’s help was decisive at the start of the invasion. But once the Americans thought they could go it alone and Iran’s help was deemed no longer necessary, Bush included Tehran in his infamous “Axis of Evil” speech. Washington showed that it was not interested in building a new relationship with the Iranians and it has paid for that mistake ever since, said respected commentator Trita Parsi in Foreign Policy.

In 2003, Iran offered to help stabilise Iraq and ensure that the government there would be non-sectarian. Both the chaos in Afghanistan and in Iraq could have been avoided had Washington recognised the stabilising role Iran could play. But the Bush administration chose not to respond to Iran’s offer.

This history of rejection is why most conservative politicians in Iran are deeply hesitant about reaching out to Washington. Iran has moved on a lot during the isolationist decade since 2003 and the balance of power in Iran has shifted markedly towards the hardline institutions, the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guards.

Khamenei has little affection for the US and he has been very careful to limiting any engagement so far to only talks about Iran’s nuclear programme and the prospective lifting of sanctions — a position that has effectively been forced on him by the parlous state of the Iranian economy.

Ali Ansari commented on the focus on Iraq and the way that the discussions between Iran and the US are very precisely focused on specific topics, with no hint of a Grand Bargain. He wrote in the Guardian that “there has been no desire to extend the talks to include Syria, a country that many among the Iranian establishment consider to be the frontline in the global struggle against the US and where Iranian determination is seen as yielding results”.

But events in Iraq may offer an opening to start that discussion.