Commentary by U.S. Alliance for Democratic Iran
The much-hyped talks between the United States and Iran over the security of Iraq finally took place on Monday. A sober assessment of reports from Baghdad, however, clearly confirms the predictions that Tehran had gone to these talks to buy time and to partially ease growing international pressure. Iran, which had to bow to the hard realities in Iraq and to an emerging regional alignment at odds with its hegemonic ambitions, broke a 27- year old taboo and entered the Baghdad talk without dealing with its core issue: Tehran’s destructive role in the ongoing mayhem in Iraq.
While the US Ambassador to Iraq, Ryan C. Crocker, pressed Iran on specific security challenges resulting from Iran’s destabilizing meddling, Tehran’s Ambassador, Hassan Kazemi Qumi, a notorious former Quds Force commander-turned-diplomat, talked about mechanisms and particulars of further talks and repeated Tehran’s “declaratory positions” about US occupation and need for its immediate withdrawal.
Amb. Crocker sought specific deeds by Tehran in line with its stated interest for a secure, unified, and democratic Iraq, Kazemi Qumi, however, talked about the need for Iran to train and arm Iraq’s security forces. Translation: Not only we will not stop arming and training terrorists and extremist militia forces inside Iraq’s security agencies, we seek to make it even official.
Coming to these negotiations, Tehran, which had downgraded, twice, the level of its chief negotiator in these talks from Deputy foreign minister to an ambassador, had four years of experience in prolonging non-substantive talks and talking about talks. This skill was very much perfected through the EU’s four years of fruitless negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program. This is just one of the reasons why diplomatic norm of resolving conflicts through talks fails miserably every time when it is exercised in dealings with Tehran.
Qumi however could not hide Tehran’s deep-rooted and strategic fear of the widening impact of its main anti-fundamentalist opposition, the Iranian Mojahedin, in Iraq. The group, while confined to its base called Camp Ashraf, has acted as a catalyst for engendering a genuine Iraqi national reconciliation and a democratic front adamantly opposed to Iran’s destabilization of Iraq.
Knowing full well that the more Tehran leaders make the MEK a main item in their list of demands, the more MEK’s prominence in any policy equations toward Tehran is underscored, Qumi was in bind. Ignoring the MEK factor, however, was not an option, and Qumi opted to ask for the expulsion of the group form Iraq. Of course Qumi is fully aware that even relocation of a member of the MEK form Camp Ashraf is a violation of several international covenants covering the status of group’s members as “protected persons” in Iraq.
The Los Angeles Times reported on Monday that in the Baghdad talks, Iran would want a deal on the Iranian Mojahedin as well as the release of five Quds Force commanders currently detained by the U.S. Army in Iraq. The Times, however, noted that “A far bigger prize for Tehran than the five Iranian diplomats detained by the U.S. military would be the Mujahedin Khalq, which is committed to the overthrow of Iran’s ruling clerics… The group is based at Camp Ashraf, in Iraq’s eastern province of Diyala, home to a few thousand of the movements’ followers. Tehran would want the camp closed and to have its members handed over or dispersed around the world.”
Following the talks, Iran’s state-run media described the meeting as a show of Tehran’s strength and the United States’ utter weakness.
Well, this is what you get for negotiating about Iraq’s security with a rogue regime and the top instigator of Iraq’s insecurity. (USADI)
