Claude Salhani, Middle East Times
United States and Iranian officials met face-to-face for the first time in 27 years in Baghdad Monday, when the American ambassador in Baghdad met with his Iranian counterpart for a four-hour session.
Yet despite the multiple issues at hand – Iran’s nuclear proliferation and the continued buildup of US military forces in the Gulf region – only one topic was on the agenda; Iraq’s security, or rather the lack thereof.
But as Alireza Jafarzadeh, an Iranian with close ties to the anti-mullah opposition points out, "don’t expect a miracle." It was Jafarzadeh who revealed Iran’s terrorist network in Iraq and its terror training camps since 2003. Jafarzadeh was the first to disclose the existence of the Natanz uranium enrichment facility and the Arak heavy water facility in August 2002.
Indeed, don’t expect a miracle because in essence the two sides are talking across each other rather than to each other.
Upon entering into this unprecedented negotiation Washington had a single objective: to get Tehran to stop its meddling in Iraqi affairs in order to tone down the violence that is ripping Iraq apart. Washington wants to see Tehran stop supplying the Shiite militias in Iraq with explosives, training, finances, and safe passage to and from Iran.
Tehran on the other hand has three objectives: First and foremost, Iran wants to see the United States withdraw its military forces from Iraq, leaving it a free hand to pursue its policy of turning Iraq into an Islamic state along similar lines followed by Iran and based on the theocracy established by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979.
Iran, says Jafarzadeh, "seeks to establish a radical theocratic state modeled after its own." Naturally the United States wants to keep Iraq secular. The feasibility of Iraq turning into a mirror image of Iran is somewhat remote but we’ll return to the point later.
The second point Iran wants is to obtain the release of five commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard corps currently detained by US forces in Iraq on suspicion of helping incite the violence. Jafarzadeh says in fact the five are members of the notorious Al Quds force, whose primary function is to carry out terrorist operations for Iran.
And the third point Tehran wants to see happen is for the United States to stop its protection of members of the Iranian Mujahideen-e-Khalq – or MeK – who are currently under US protection in a place called Ashraf City, some 160 kilometers (100 miles) north of the Iraqi capital, where approximately 4,000 members and supporters of MeK are based.
The issue of MeK is one of the larger points of contention between Washington and Tehran. Although MeK continues to figure of the United States State Department’s list of terrorist organizations, it is in large part not entirely thanks to the MeK that Washington has obtained a great deal of intelligence, including detailed maps, drawings, names, and addresses of scientists and people involved in the building of Iran’s nuclear industry.
Part of the difficulties the American team will face while negotiating with Tehran is that the Americans will not know for sure who they are negotiating with.
By that I mean who does the Iranian ambassador in Iraq report to? Will he report to Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or will he report to the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei? Or yet will he report to the Revolutionary Guards commander?
Some of the in-house dispute over power among the various Iranian tendencies may be seen in the lead up to Monday’s talks. First Iran said it would dispatch the deputy foreign minister to partake in the talks. Shortly after, Tehran changed course, saying it would send its UN ambassador instead. And a short while later Iranian leaders changed their minds once more giving the task to Hassan Kazemi Qomi, the Iranian ambassador in Baghdad.
But here’s the Catch 22; Qomi is a former commander of Al Quds Brigade, accused of creating violence in Iraq.
Now let’s go back for a moment to the issue of Iran turning Iraq into an Islamic Republic. A great number of Iraqi Shiite clerics had taken refuge in neighboring Iran during the tyrannical rule of Saddam Hussein. These Iraqi clerics have seen firsthand what the theocracy has done for Iran, and many of them do not want the same for their country, Iraq.
Which is why Iran has had such a difficult time, so far, in making more headway in that regard in a country right next door where the ruling mullahs thought they would have been a shoe-in.
Ironically, both the Americans and the Iranians can finally agree on one thing; the harsh reality offered by Iraq.
The Americans believe the Iraqi expedition would be a "cakewalk" and that the GI’s would have been greeted with open arms, rosewater, rice, and flowers; as is the tradition. The reality as we know it is quite different. And the Iranians who equally thought that converting Iraq into an Islamic republic would have been a much easier task, are also waking up to the rude task that is Iraq. The question now is who will have more staying power: Washington or Tehran?
Claude Salhani is Editor of the Middle East Times.