USING DIPLOMACY RATHER THAN THREATS
Washington Takes a Chance on Tehran
By Georg Mascolo and Bernhard Zand
Good news from the war zone: Syria and Iran -- both countries that have shown little interest so far in relieving tensions in Iraq -- will take part in a conference in Baghdad this weekend in a development that has taken many by surprise. The mood in Washington is astonishingly upbeat after this radical shift in strategy.
It must have been a cool encounter last Thursday when Hassan Kazemi Ghomi, the Iranian ambassador in Baghdad, met with Mithal al-Alusi, one of Iran's sharpest critics among Iraq's postwar leaders. To meet with Alusi, Ghomi had to travel a short but dangerous route -- one of the deadliest in Baghdad -- from his residence on the Tigris River to the palace where former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein used to hold conferences on the edge of what is now the Green Zone. His route took him through the notorious Karadat-Marjam intersection, where dozens of Iraqis have lost their lives in bomb attacks.
"The mullahs," says Alusi, "will stop at nothing in Iraq. Not only are they providing weapons and money to the Shiite militias, but they are also doing the same thing for the militias' worst enemy, al-Qaida. We are afraid of Iran! If Tehran builds a nuclear bomb, Iraq will be in danger, not America."
The Iranian ambassador was considerably more relaxed, and for good reason. A conference is scheduled to take place in Baghdad this Saturday that could prevent a new war from breaking out in the Persian Gulf. If the conference is successful, a second meeting will follow -- at the cabinet minister level -- in Istanbul.
Alusi is an established member of the foreign policy committee in the Iraqi parliament. He knows all the bureaucrats who are organizing the conference, writing the agenda and who are in contact with the United States embassy, officials in London and the United Nations Security Council. Despite their differences, Ambassador Ghomi was not meeting with Alusi to argue, but to ask questions.
"Tehran only sends professionals to serve as diplomats in Baghdad," says Alusi. Ghomi, but also the Syrian emissary and the staff of outgoing US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad are currently in great demand in Baghdad. The Jordanians, the Russians, the Turks and the Saudis -- indeed, anyone who still has an embassy in Baghdad -- are gearing up for a diplomatic sensation.
After a war of words that has been escalating for months, Iran and the United States are about to sit down at the negotiating table. Iraq, which has been the source of nothing but bad news for years, is simultaneously the organizer, cause and site of the surprising summit meeting.
Most astonishing is the Americans' sudden change of heart. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who only recently accused the regime in Tehran of "extortion," announced what she called a new "diplomatic initiative" at a hearing before the US Senate last Thursday.
What then was the purpose of the weeks of saber rattling that had the entire region worried about a new war? And was it the US's Jan. 13 breakthrough with another member of US President George W. Bush's axis of evil, North Korea, that prompted the sudden change in the Bush administration's Middle East policy?
The Iranian ambassador's composure reflects his government's approach to the upcoming Baghdad conference. Only two days after the expected announcement that it would take part in the meeting, Tehran announced a second, more unexpected move: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who had just received his Syrian counterpart, President Bashar Assad, in Tehran, would travel to Saudi Arabia, currently the US's key Arab ally, over the weekend.
When it comes to the Iranians, this sudden interest in negotiation raises a different question than it does with the Americans: Are they serious about the conference, or is their active diplomacy primarily meant to divert attention away from their nuclear program, which continues to move forward unchecked?
Bringing about the Baghdad summit was a major effort for the Iraqis. According to Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, the idea materialized last autumn from a position of weakness. Important political figures in Iraq -- including Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and Shiite leader Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim -- were opposed to a regional conference at the end of the last year, making a successful outcome all the more important today. They and other critics had argued that negotiations between the world's major powers over Iraq's fate would only undermine the authority of the government in Baghdad.
So how could Iraq itself benefit from the conference?
Day after day, the sober news coming out of Iraq paints the picture of a country that many of its citizens have already abandoned -- and for good reason. The military situation in the country last Thursday, for example, was hardly encouraging. Heavy fighting in Iskandariyah, 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Baghdad: eight deaths, 11 wounded. Bodies found in various locations in Baghdad: 10. Street bombs in Mosul and Baghdad: two dead, four wounded. Mortar attacks in Habbaniyah, 75 kilometers (47 miles) west of Baghdad: four dead, 14 wounded. Fighting between insurgents and government troops in Muktadiyah: about 10 dead and five arrests. Bodies found in Mosul: six, two of them beheaded.
It is worth mentioning that last Thursday was a relatively quiet day in Iraq.
As encouraging as the change of course in neighboring Iran and Syria is, though, it hardly seems likely that it could put a stop to the bloodshed, even in the medium term.
The two bloodiest fronts -- al-Qaida and Sunni militias against Shiite civilians, and Shiite militias against Sunnis -- have already acquired a life of their own. Whether this daily religious strife can be quelled, especially in Baghdad, depends on the success of David Petraeus, the top US commander in Iraq, and the new Iraqi-American security plan for the capital.
Washington plans to directly address Iran's support of Shiite militias at the Baghdad conference. At about the same time as Rice was appearing before the Senate, US Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell claimed that Iran is training these militias to use special armor-piercing weapons. US forces had unearthed hundreds of these projectiles the day before in a dusty field near the Baghdad airport. According to US sources, the explosive missiles, which were found hidden in refrigerators and a large water tank, came from Iran.
Even Maliki's national security advisor, Mowaffak Rubaie, doubts that a shift in Iran's behavior can bring about decisive change in Iraq. In an interview with CNN, Rubaie claimed that Tehran had already "stopped a lot of their tactics and a lot of intervention or interference in Iraqi internal affairs" weeks ago.
But if there is such wide agreement that the conference is unlikely to achieve its declared goal of helping Iraq, at least in the short term, what constitutes its undeniable promise, and why has it triggered such a sense of relief worldwide?
Expectations have been especially high in Washington, although White House spokesman Tony Snow was quick to issue a "clarification" stating that there "will not be bilateral talks between the United States and Iran or the United States and Syria within the context of these meetings."
It appears that the White House is unwilling, at least for now, to issue more than a cautious signal that it is at least willing to explore the possibility of talks. Indeed, the fear that efforts to achieve rapprochement between the United States and Iran will ultimately fail has dampened expectations.
Nevertheless, Washington's cautious approach hasn't prevented others from pinning great hopes to the Baghdad conference. Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, a close confidant of President Bush, sees the upcoming talks at the ambassador level as the "best framework" for negotiations with the US's archenemies.
In other words, if things go well in Baghdad next weekend, Secretary of State Rice could soon be traveling to Istanbul to continue the effort.
A number of examples from the recent past bolster this optimism -- above all in North Korea. In a situation similar to that occurring in the Middle East, although six countries were involved in the official negotiations with North Korea, the real breakthrough was achieved by US and North Korean diplomats in secret talks in Berlin.
The Dayton Peace Accords, which ended the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1995, have also been an inspiration for what Secretary of State Rice called a "neighbors meeting " in the Gulf region. However, the architect of that agreement, Richard Holbrooke, noted a key difference last week: "Back then we could threaten to bomb; today we can only threaten to withdraw."
However one assesses the current situation, the important issue is that a war between Iran and the United States seems far less likely today than it has in recent weeks. The regional conference and the planned follow-up conference at the ministerial level corresponds exactly to the proposal the non-partisan Baker-Hamilton Commission made last December. At first Bush coolly ignored the proposal, but that is now changing.
With its new flexibility, the White House appears to be pursuing a collection of goals instead of a single strategy: stabilizing Iraq for the long term, reassessing its relationship with Syria and examining the prospects of achieving a negotiated solution with Iran.
The Bush team apparently feels strong enough to take a chance on at least a small measure of diplomacy. For months, Washington's strategy could be summed up as "driving up the price." Now the White House is convinced that economic sanctions, stationing two aircraft carriers in the Gulf and the US-Saudi alliance have unnerved the Iranian leadership. "They're worried," said Rice. Her deputy, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns, agreed: "Iran is on the defensive."
Burns, who also handles the Iranian nuclear dossier for the US government, has noted for weeks that the Iranians are prepared to negotiate. "We're getting pinged all over the world by Iranians wanting to talk to us," Burns said.
The US government has no plans to withdraw the demand that Iran suspend its uranium enrichment program. Burns calls the idea that negotiations could go one for months, perhaps even years, while Iran calmly closes the nuclear fuel cycle "absurd."
Zalmay Khalilzad, the outgoing US ambassador in Iraq, can be considered the spiritual father of the Iraq conference and will participate in the presumably two-part meeting. The plan was rejected when Khalilzad proposed it in the spring of 2006 -- presumably at the insistence of Vice President Dick Cheney, the most unyielding opponent of Iran in Washington. Cheney, who insiders say is "frustrated," is likely to be unhappy with the current development.
Ryan Crocker, 57, Khalilzad's successor and the first Arabic-speaking expert on the Middle East to be named ambassador to postwar Iraq, will attend the second meeting, which will likely take place in April.
Crocker, a heavy metal fan and aficionado of pickup trucks, is regarded as a colorful personality at the State Department. The former US ambassador to Pakistan, Crocker is returning to Baghdad where he was stationed in 1979 and married his current wife.
Crocker, a dedicated marathon runner, has consistently volunteered for the most dangerous posts since working in Baghdad in the early Saddam years. After Hezbollah's attack on the US embassy in Beirut in 1983, which killed 64 people, Crocker, who was injured in the blast, helped dig in the rubble for survivors.
But he does not share the Bush team's optimism. On the contrary, in a six-page memo he wrote in 2002 to then Secretary of State Colin Powell, Crocker warned that violence could erupt between Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq and that Saudi Arabia would attempt to reduce Syrian and Iranian influence in the country.
The title of the memo was "The Perfect Storm."
Washington Takes a Chance on Tehran
By Georg Mascolo and Bernhard Zand
Good news from the war zone: Syria and Iran -- both countries that have shown little interest so far in relieving tensions in Iraq -- will take part in a conference in Baghdad this weekend in a development that has taken many by surprise. The mood in Washington is astonishingly upbeat after this radical shift in strategy.
It must have been a cool encounter last Thursday when Hassan Kazemi Ghomi, the Iranian ambassador in Baghdad, met with Mithal al-Alusi, one of Iran's sharpest critics among Iraq's postwar leaders. To meet with Alusi, Ghomi had to travel a short but dangerous route -- one of the deadliest in Baghdad -- from his residence on the Tigris River to the palace where former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein used to hold conferences on the edge of what is now the Green Zone. His route took him through the notorious Karadat-Marjam intersection, where dozens of Iraqis have lost their lives in bomb attacks.
"The mullahs," says Alusi, "will stop at nothing in Iraq. Not only are they providing weapons and money to the Shiite militias, but they are also doing the same thing for the militias' worst enemy, al-Qaida. We are afraid of Iran! If Tehran builds a nuclear bomb, Iraq will be in danger, not America."
The Iranian ambassador was considerably more relaxed, and for good reason. A conference is scheduled to take place in Baghdad this Saturday that could prevent a new war from breaking out in the Persian Gulf. If the conference is successful, a second meeting will follow -- at the cabinet minister level -- in Istanbul.
Alusi is an established member of the foreign policy committee in the Iraqi parliament. He knows all the bureaucrats who are organizing the conference, writing the agenda and who are in contact with the United States embassy, officials in London and the United Nations Security Council. Despite their differences, Ambassador Ghomi was not meeting with Alusi to argue, but to ask questions.
"Tehran only sends professionals to serve as diplomats in Baghdad," says Alusi. Ghomi, but also the Syrian emissary and the staff of outgoing US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad are currently in great demand in Baghdad. The Jordanians, the Russians, the Turks and the Saudis -- indeed, anyone who still has an embassy in Baghdad -- are gearing up for a diplomatic sensation.
After a war of words that has been escalating for months, Iran and the United States are about to sit down at the negotiating table. Iraq, which has been the source of nothing but bad news for years, is simultaneously the organizer, cause and site of the surprising summit meeting.
Most astonishing is the Americans' sudden change of heart. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who only recently accused the regime in Tehran of "extortion," announced what she called a new "diplomatic initiative" at a hearing before the US Senate last Thursday.
What then was the purpose of the weeks of saber rattling that had the entire region worried about a new war? And was it the US's Jan. 13 breakthrough with another member of US President George W. Bush's axis of evil, North Korea, that prompted the sudden change in the Bush administration's Middle East policy?
The Iranian ambassador's composure reflects his government's approach to the upcoming Baghdad conference. Only two days after the expected announcement that it would take part in the meeting, Tehran announced a second, more unexpected move: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who had just received his Syrian counterpart, President Bashar Assad, in Tehran, would travel to Saudi Arabia, currently the US's key Arab ally, over the weekend.
When it comes to the Iranians, this sudden interest in negotiation raises a different question than it does with the Americans: Are they serious about the conference, or is their active diplomacy primarily meant to divert attention away from their nuclear program, which continues to move forward unchecked?
Bringing about the Baghdad summit was a major effort for the Iraqis. According to Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, the idea materialized last autumn from a position of weakness. Important political figures in Iraq -- including Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and Shiite leader Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim -- were opposed to a regional conference at the end of the last year, making a successful outcome all the more important today. They and other critics had argued that negotiations between the world's major powers over Iraq's fate would only undermine the authority of the government in Baghdad.
So how could Iraq itself benefit from the conference?
Day after day, the sober news coming out of Iraq paints the picture of a country that many of its citizens have already abandoned -- and for good reason. The military situation in the country last Thursday, for example, was hardly encouraging. Heavy fighting in Iskandariyah, 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Baghdad: eight deaths, 11 wounded. Bodies found in various locations in Baghdad: 10. Street bombs in Mosul and Baghdad: two dead, four wounded. Mortar attacks in Habbaniyah, 75 kilometers (47 miles) west of Baghdad: four dead, 14 wounded. Fighting between insurgents and government troops in Muktadiyah: about 10 dead and five arrests. Bodies found in Mosul: six, two of them beheaded.
It is worth mentioning that last Thursday was a relatively quiet day in Iraq.
As encouraging as the change of course in neighboring Iran and Syria is, though, it hardly seems likely that it could put a stop to the bloodshed, even in the medium term.
The two bloodiest fronts -- al-Qaida and Sunni militias against Shiite civilians, and Shiite militias against Sunnis -- have already acquired a life of their own. Whether this daily religious strife can be quelled, especially in Baghdad, depends on the success of David Petraeus, the top US commander in Iraq, and the new Iraqi-American security plan for the capital.
Washington plans to directly address Iran's support of Shiite militias at the Baghdad conference. At about the same time as Rice was appearing before the Senate, US Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell claimed that Iran is training these militias to use special armor-piercing weapons. US forces had unearthed hundreds of these projectiles the day before in a dusty field near the Baghdad airport. According to US sources, the explosive missiles, which were found hidden in refrigerators and a large water tank, came from Iran.
Even Maliki's national security advisor, Mowaffak Rubaie, doubts that a shift in Iran's behavior can bring about decisive change in Iraq. In an interview with CNN, Rubaie claimed that Tehran had already "stopped a lot of their tactics and a lot of intervention or interference in Iraqi internal affairs" weeks ago.
But if there is such wide agreement that the conference is unlikely to achieve its declared goal of helping Iraq, at least in the short term, what constitutes its undeniable promise, and why has it triggered such a sense of relief worldwide?
Expectations have been especially high in Washington, although White House spokesman Tony Snow was quick to issue a "clarification" stating that there "will not be bilateral talks between the United States and Iran or the United States and Syria within the context of these meetings."
It appears that the White House is unwilling, at least for now, to issue more than a cautious signal that it is at least willing to explore the possibility of talks. Indeed, the fear that efforts to achieve rapprochement between the United States and Iran will ultimately fail has dampened expectations.
Nevertheless, Washington's cautious approach hasn't prevented others from pinning great hopes to the Baghdad conference. Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, a close confidant of President Bush, sees the upcoming talks at the ambassador level as the "best framework" for negotiations with the US's archenemies.
In other words, if things go well in Baghdad next weekend, Secretary of State Rice could soon be traveling to Istanbul to continue the effort.
A number of examples from the recent past bolster this optimism -- above all in North Korea. In a situation similar to that occurring in the Middle East, although six countries were involved in the official negotiations with North Korea, the real breakthrough was achieved by US and North Korean diplomats in secret talks in Berlin.
The Dayton Peace Accords, which ended the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1995, have also been an inspiration for what Secretary of State Rice called a "neighbors meeting " in the Gulf region. However, the architect of that agreement, Richard Holbrooke, noted a key difference last week: "Back then we could threaten to bomb; today we can only threaten to withdraw."
However one assesses the current situation, the important issue is that a war between Iran and the United States seems far less likely today than it has in recent weeks. The regional conference and the planned follow-up conference at the ministerial level corresponds exactly to the proposal the non-partisan Baker-Hamilton Commission made last December. At first Bush coolly ignored the proposal, but that is now changing.
With its new flexibility, the White House appears to be pursuing a collection of goals instead of a single strategy: stabilizing Iraq for the long term, reassessing its relationship with Syria and examining the prospects of achieving a negotiated solution with Iran.
The Bush team apparently feels strong enough to take a chance on at least a small measure of diplomacy. For months, Washington's strategy could be summed up as "driving up the price." Now the White House is convinced that economic sanctions, stationing two aircraft carriers in the Gulf and the US-Saudi alliance have unnerved the Iranian leadership. "They're worried," said Rice. Her deputy, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns, agreed: "Iran is on the defensive."
Burns, who also handles the Iranian nuclear dossier for the US government, has noted for weeks that the Iranians are prepared to negotiate. "We're getting pinged all over the world by Iranians wanting to talk to us," Burns said.
The US government has no plans to withdraw the demand that Iran suspend its uranium enrichment program. Burns calls the idea that negotiations could go one for months, perhaps even years, while Iran calmly closes the nuclear fuel cycle "absurd."
Zalmay Khalilzad, the outgoing US ambassador in Iraq, can be considered the spiritual father of the Iraq conference and will participate in the presumably two-part meeting. The plan was rejected when Khalilzad proposed it in the spring of 2006 -- presumably at the insistence of Vice President Dick Cheney, the most unyielding opponent of Iran in Washington. Cheney, who insiders say is "frustrated," is likely to be unhappy with the current development.
Ryan Crocker, 57, Khalilzad's successor and the first Arabic-speaking expert on the Middle East to be named ambassador to postwar Iraq, will attend the second meeting, which will likely take place in April.
Crocker, a heavy metal fan and aficionado of pickup trucks, is regarded as a colorful personality at the State Department. The former US ambassador to Pakistan, Crocker is returning to Baghdad where he was stationed in 1979 and married his current wife.
Crocker, a dedicated marathon runner, has consistently volunteered for the most dangerous posts since working in Baghdad in the early Saddam years. After Hezbollah's attack on the US embassy in Beirut in 1983, which killed 64 people, Crocker, who was injured in the blast, helped dig in the rubble for survivors.
But he does not share the Bush team's optimism. On the contrary, in a six-page memo he wrote in 2002 to then Secretary of State Colin Powell, Crocker warned that violence could erupt between Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq and that Saudi Arabia would attempt to reduce Syrian and Iranian influence in the country.
The title of the memo was "The Perfect Storm."
