Cheney-Abdullah, Talibani-Ahmadinejad, Maliki-Ahmadinejad, Bush-Maliki…Baker-Hamilton?
As public attitudes toward the Iraq war transition from frustration to despair, people are grasping for ways to extricate the United States from a conflict that has now lasted longer than U.S. involvement in World War II.
The latest not-quite-new idea is that the United States engage with Iraq’s neighbors to help contain the civil war that seems to grow worse by the day. In a memo written on November 8th, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley urged President Bush to reach out to Saudi Arabia. Under the heading “What We Can Do to Help Maliki”, Hadley explained that the Bush administration should ”Step up our efforts to get Saudi Arabia to take a leadership role…” Less than two weeks later, Vice President Cheney was in Riyadh meeting with Saudi King Abdullah.
In a similar vein, the Iraq Study Group (aka Baker-Hamilton Commission) is said to be exploring an outreach to Iran and Syria. The notion has been widely criticized by the same neoconservatives who got us into the Iraq War in the first place, but one wonders why anyone takes these people seriously any more.
It is not as though both countries have not worked with us in the past. Iran did so in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, and Syria has rounded up (and sometimes tortured) suspected Al Qaeda members. These two countries cooperated with us before, and might well cooperate with us now in Iraq, not because they would like to do the United States any favors. At some level, the leaders in Damascus and Tehran are probably taking some perverse pleasure in seeing the American military bogged down, and U.S. credibility eroding by the day.
On the other hand, Iran has no interest in seeing its now dominant position in the region undermined by a civil conflict in Iraq that spills over its borders. Syria, meanwhile, is hardly immune to the sectarian strife that is engulfing Iraq, and it too has much to lose if the war in Iraq grows even more violent. It is not unreasonable to think that these and other countries would be anxious to contain the violence, and perhaps even work together to try to forge a political solution within the country.
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani understands this, which explains why he was in Tehran two days ago meeting with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Prime Minister Maliki made a similar visit in September. Just last week, Iraq restored full diplomatic relations with Syria after 25-years of estrangement.
The ability of outsiders to influence domestic politics in any country is extremely limited — a fact that Americans have learned on numerous occasions over the past few years as the liberal, secular candidates that we favored in elections in Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority went down in defeat — but all of Iraq’s neighbors have been supporting proxies and clients there, and it is hard to believe that a threat to withdraw that support would have no effect whatsoever.
However, and this is a big however, there can be no agreement between Iran and the United States, so long as U.S. policy is focused on regime change in Tehran. And, make no mistake, that is the stated objective of U.S. policy, a policy that has been endorsed on both sides of the aisle, by both Democrats and Republicans. (See the Iran Freedom Support Act.)
(On a related point, my friend and colleague Justin Logan has put together a terrific half-day conference at the Cato Institute concerning U.S.-Iranian relations, and what to do about the Iranian nuclear program. The event will be held on Monday, December 11th, and includes Lawrence Korb from the Center for American Progress; Trita Parsi of the National Iranian-American Council; Flynt Leverett, from the New America Foundation; Cato’s Ted Galen Carpenter, and several other experts. Visit the Cato website to learn more.)
Iran’s leaders will not be willing to negotiate with a Bush administration committed to their overthrow. So the question becomes, how badly do we want to get out of Iraq? And what concessions are we willing to make in order to do so?
Related posts: