Iran, Iraq Crises Converge

Gareth Porter outlines some of the potentialities of Iran and the US entering into discussions to quell the Iraq situation.

If Americans decided to engage in talks, they will undoubtedly want to separate the discussions about Iraq and Iran's alleged nuclear program. However, that will probably be impossible, according to Porter:

Although the administration seeks to keep cooperation with Iran over the crisis in Iraq separate from its strategy of isolation of Iran, the evolution of the Iraq crisis may make such separation impossible. The discussions on Iraq will have to involve various political formulas which the United States and Iran could both support. Iran would be asked to help sell the militant Shiite parties on a settlement plan with unpalatable compromises for those same parties.

If the Iranians become more deeply involved in the internal negotiation in Iraq, and the usefulness of their role becomes widely recognised, it will certainly be more difficult for the United States to resist political-diplomatic pressures to talk with Tehran about the larger issues threatening the peace of the region -- Iran's nuclear programme and the U.S. efforts to isolate and destabilise the regime.

It's going to be interesting to see whether hardliners on the US side can scuttle any dialogue. Either way, this could be a very important development in the coming weeks.