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U.S. and Iran Signaling New Joint Effort in Iraq Crisis U.S. Is in Pursuit of Iranian Role in Talks on Iraq
(about 7 hours later)
The United States and Iran on Monday signaled increased willingness to work together to arrest the expanding Sunni insurgency in Iraq, with Secretary of State John Kerry openly suggesting such a collaboration would be constructive and another American official saying the subject could come up at talks this week on the Iranian nuclear dispute. WASHINGTON — A senior American diplomat met with his Iranian counterpart in Vienna on Monday to explore whether the United States and Iran could work together to create a more stable Iraqi government and ease the threat from Sunni militants.
Cooperation between the United States and Iran to contain the Iraqi crisis would represent the first time the two countries — estranged adversaries for more than three decades — have jointly undertaken a common security purpose since they shared military intelligence to counter the Taliban in Afghanistan in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks 13 years ago. The initial meeting took place after Secretary of State John Kerry signaled that the Obama administration was open to cooperating with Iran on Iraq, raising the possibility of seeking help from a country that the United States has often described as a state sponsor of terrorism that must be prevented from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
Mr. Kerry, in an interview with Yahoo News, called the advance by insurgents under the banner of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria over the past week an “existential threat” to Iraq and suggested American airstrikes were one possible answer. Asked if the United States would cooperate with Iran to thwart ISIS, Mr. Kerry said, “I wouldn’t rule out anything that would be constructive.” “We’re open to discussions if there’s something constructive that can be contributed by Iran,” Mr. Kerry said an interview here with Yahoo! News on Monday morning. “I think we need to go step by step and see what, in fact, might be a reality, but I wouldn’t rule out anything that would be constructive.”
A senior Obama administration official said that Deputy Secretary of State William J. Burns may talk to the Iranians about Iraq at the nuclear talks, which are to reconvene on Wednesday in Vienna. “There may be discussion of that on the margins,” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the evolving situation. William J. Burns, the deputy secretary of state, briefly raised Iraq on the margins of previously scheduled negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program in Vienna. A State Department official said the purpose of “these engagements” with Iran and other neighbors would be to discuss the threat posed by Sunni militants and to discuss “the need to support inclusivity in Iraq and refrain from pressing a sectarian agenda.”
A State Department spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, later sought to more precisely define the nature of any cooperation, asserting it would be entirely political. “We believe the focus should be on encouraging Iraq’s leaders to govern in a non-sectarian way, and our discussion wouldn’t be about cooperating or coordinating on military goals,” she told reporters at a daily briefing. While, in his interview, Mr. Kerry left the door open for military cooperation with Iran, a State Department spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, later sought to more precisely define the nature of any cooperation, saying it would be entirely political. The State Department statement emphasized that the meetings would not discuss “military coordination or strategic determination about Iraq’s future over the head of the Iraqi people.”
In Iran, a strong backer of the Shiite government in Iraq, top officials also signaled readiness to collaborate with the United States on containing a crisis in a neighbor that the Iranian government has partly blamed on the legacy of the American military’s eight-year war that ousted Saddam Hussein. President Hassan Rouhani of Iran has said he would welcome efforts by “all countries in combating terrorism.” American officials did not say when the next meeting would take place, but a senior official said the United States will “continue to engage as long as it makes sense.”
On Sunday, a key aide to Mr. Rouhani, Hamid Aboutalebi, wrote in a series of messages on his Persian Twitter account that only Iran and the United States are in a position to solve the Iraq crisis. For the Obama administration, the incentive for engaging Iran is clear. American officials would like to compare notes with Iran over the Sunni militant group known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, which last week made startling military gains, routing the Iraqi army and even threatening Baghdad.
The conciliatory tone was noteworthy given that Mr. Aboutalebi, President Rouhani’s choice to be Iran’s new United Nations ambassador, was rejected by the United States earlier this year because of his indirect role as a translator for the militants who seized the American Embassy in Tehran in 1979, setting off the break in Iranian-American ties that has shaped the relationship ever since. More important, Iran also has the ability to frustrate the Obama administration’s strategy to pressure Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, and his Shiite-dominated government to reach out to Sunnis and form a multisectarian government in Iraq. President Obama made clear last week that no American military aid would be forthcoming unless that effort was made.
In the United States, the signs of American-Iranian cooperation on the Iraq crisis set off new rounds of recrimination over whether such a move was in Washington’s interest or a strategic mistake. In a sign of the growing dangers in Iraq, Mr. Obama notified Congress on Monday that he intended to send as many as 275 military personnel to augment security and provide support for the heavily fortified American Embassy in Baghdad. The United States has already announced plans to evacuate a significant number of embassy personnel.
Trita Parsi, the president of the National Iranian American Council, a group that has promoted diplomacy with Iran and a peaceful resolution to the nuclear dispute, welcomed such cooperation. Qassim Suleimani, the head of Iran’s paramilitary Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guards, recently traveled to Baghdad to meet with Iraqi leaders, and there are concerns that he is mobilizing Iranian-trained Iraqi Shiites to defend the Maliki government. But sending Iranian Quds Force fighters into Iraq or backing radical Shiite leaders, American officials say, would aggravate the already inflamed sectarian tensions in Iraq and even push the country toward full-fledged civil war.
“The fact that Iran has signaled openness to U.S. strikes in Iraq shows that, contrary to conventional wisdom in Washington, Iran is either not seeking hegemony in the region and/or is incapable of materializing such a desire,” Mr. Parsi said in an email. “The scaremongering about Iran’s intents and capabilities are put in check by these recent events.” American officials, while prepared to work with Mr. Maliki, are also prepared to see him replaced by another Shiite politician who might be more inclusive. But it is widely accepted in Iraqi politics that any plausible candidate for the post of prime minister must also be acceptable to Iran.
Vocal American critics of Iran’s government, on the other hand, castigated the Obama administration for even considering a collaboration with Iran on the Iraq crisis, calling it a blunder that Iran would seek to exploit for its own ends in the nuclear talks. Iran is negotiating with world powers, including the United States, which want guarantees that the Iranian nuclear program is peaceful. A temporary accord in that dispute is set to expire on July 20. Complicating the picture are the parallel talks between Iran and world powers on its nuclear program.
“Iran helped turn both Syria and Iraq into a jihadist inferno, which threatens American security, and now is positioning itself as the firewall against the very violence it created,” said Mark Dubowitz, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington-based group that has advocated strong sanctions against Iran over the nuclear issue. “The White House keeps granting Iran strategic openings that Tehran is converting into greater levels of negotiating leverage and nuclear intransigence.” With an initial July 20 deadline for an agreement looming, Iran has been pressing for a deal that involves a brief period of limits on its ability to enrich uranium, followed by a significant expansion in the number of centrifuges it can build to enrich uranium. The United States and its European allies say that the limits must be permanent and that any arrangement must provide considerable warning if Iran tries to race for a bomb.
One expert who has periodically advised the American negotiating team said there was already “a recognition the Iranians will try to milk any help on Iraq to get any advantage they can” as they haggle with the lead negotiators over how much of their nuclear infrastructure can remain if a final nuclear agreement is reached.
Mr. Obama’s aides, however, have long said that preventing Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon is his No. 1 priority in the Middle East, in part because an Iranian nuclear weapon, the President has argued, will trigger an arms race in the region. For that reason, American officials insist the nuclear question and the Iraq issue must be kept separate.
And a common enemy does not guarantee a common strategy, and for two countries that have been deeply distrustful adversaries for more than three decades, finding common security interests will not be easy, officials said. That was clear in the cautious tone of some of those officials.
The outreach to Iran was a surprising turnabout for the Obama administration, which has not held talks over regional crises with Iran. Cooperation between the United States and Iran to contain the Iraqi crisis would represent the first time the two countries have jointly undertaken a common security purpose since they shared military intelligence to counter the Taliban in Afghanistan after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
Mr. Kerry, in fact, worked furiously to persuade the United Nations to disinvite Iran from the Geneva peace talks on Syria, arguing that Tehran’s military support to Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, disqualified it from participating in the negotiations.
The United States and Iran have long been bitter, and even deadly, rivals in Iraq. Iran’s Quds Force trained Iraqi Shiite militias that targeted American troops and equipped with the militias’ powerful explosive devices. The American military established a task force to hunt Iranian-backed Shiite Iraqi fighters.
The Bush administration held talks with Iranian officials in Baghdad during the American occupation of Iraq. But those discussions made no headway.
Moreover, the Treasury Department accused Iran earlier this year of harboring an militant who provided support to Al Qaeda.