Iraq crisis may make bedfellows of the US and Iran, but don't expect romance

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/17/iraq-bedfellows-of-us-iran-dont-expect-romance

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In the heat of the Iraq crisis, old adages are getting a new lease of life, with the logic of "my enemy's enemy is my friend" raising the tantalising prospect of cooperation between the US and Iran to support beleaguered Nouri al-Maliki against the fanatical jihadists of Isis.

Over the past few days, Washington and Tehran have been eyeing each other cautiously – 30 years of mutual suspicion and hostility are not easily overcome – while Britain has taken a bolder position, bringing forward a long-expected announcement on the reopening of its embassy in Iran because "the circumstances are right", as William Hague, the foreign secretary, put it on Tuesday.

In the background, slow-moving talks on Iran's nuclear programme continue; in advance of a 20 July deadline for agreement, sanctions remain in force. US officials would prefer to keep Iraq well out of that forum. So it is a token of the urgency of the situation in Baghdad that the Obama administration has signalled it could launch air strikes, and even act jointly with Iran – though not, in the careful words of one state department official, "over the head of the Iraqi people".

It is possible the convergence of interests in defeating Isis will lead to a common Iraq strategy, but unlikely this will develop into a fully-fledged romance between Iran, the US and the west. Cooperation between Washington and Tehran looks likely to be tacit and probably at arm's length, experts believe.

The model is the experience of Afghanistan in late 2001, when the US provided air power and intelligence for the Northern Alliance, Iran's ally, and Iran proposed Taliban targets for US bombers. That brief honeymoon ended when George Bush included Tehran in his "axis of evil", along with Iraq and North Korea – reinforcing the old Iranian view of America, which famously engineered the overthrow of Iran's democratically elected prime minister in 1953, as "the great Satan".

Britain is only the "little Satan", but its leverage may be greater. Hague spoke to his Iranian counterpart, Javad Zarif, over the weekend, securing pledges that there would be no repeat of the "rent-a-mob" riot that wrecked the UK embassy in Tehran in late 2011. He rightly described Iran as "an important country in a volatile region" – a point that certainly bears restating.

Overheated talk about an imminent rapprochement between Iran and the US masks the point that they sometimes have shared interests in Iraq, even when Iranian Revolutionary Guards were training and supplying Shia militias attacking American troops. Maliki was backed by both countries when he was elected in 2006.

"The US and Iran both wanted stability and they didn't want devolution or fragmentation," said Charles Tripp, a historian of Iraq at London University's School of Oriental and African Studies.

"Crunch time for Maliki was always going to come when these two powerful backers withdrew their support or fell out over him," he added. "He's got to be concerned that they will now be seeking alternatives. The problem is that the whole system that cemented him in power is very sectarian. Is anyone else from the Shia alliance going to be much better? They both want someone who is able to deal with the north and the west and the Kurds without putting everyone's backs up."

In the longer term, their interests diverge. The US wants to see an inclusive democracy take root while Iran is focused on protecting Iraq's Shias and shrines while bolstering its position vis-a-vis the Sunni monarchies of the Gulf.

Saudi Arabia – which has financed jihadists in Syria, but now fears blowback from Isis – badly wants Maliki out, blaming his "sectarian and exclusionary policies" for fuelling the Sunni insurgency, and lobbying the US hard on that point. "The Saudis will cooperate with anyone who is not pro-Iranian," a well-placed Gulf source observed.

Tehran wants greater international involvement in Iraq, argues Hossein Rassam, a UK-based analyst, suggesting it may even be prepared to share intelligence with the US. "Iranians and Americans will both want to avoid a power vacuum. But the Iranians will not let go of Maliki unless they have to."

Beyond Iraq, the chances for positive change in an adversarial relationship kept tense by the Syrian war, Israel, Lebanon and the Gulf, look slim – unless there is a breakthrough on the nuclear front.

"The pattern of US and Iranian 'cooperation' will comprise parallel but separate action against Isis and in support of Iraqi security forces," predicted Shashank Joshi of the Royal United Services Institute in London. "Iran will remain far more wedded to the Iraqi status quo, and the US sceptical that counter-terrorist assistance will achieve much in the absence of much deeper political reform."