U.S. Inches Towards (Tough) Talking With Iran

It appears as if a new era in U.S.-Iran relations has started:

The American ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, shook hands yesterday with a senior Iranian envoy and exchanged a few words in Farsi in what may have signified a slight warming of the frosty relations between the two nations.

The meeting with Abbas Arakji, the envoy from Tehran, came during a one-day conference aimed at curbing the violence in Iraq.

The talks, which were marred by an attack on the foreign ministry compound in Baghdad where they took place, presented a rare opportunity to bring the US and its old foes, Iran and Syria, to the negotiating table.

Washington has accused Tehran and Damascus of fuelling the war by providing weapons and support for Shi’ite militias and Sunni insurgents respectively.

The US and Iran have not had diplomatic ties for more than a quarter of a century since militants stormed the American embassy in Tehran.

Khalilzad called on Iraq’s neighbours to do more to help the country’s transition towards stability and prosperity. In a warning to Iran over its support for Shi’ite militias he said Iraq’s neighbours must take action “to halt the flow of fighters, weapons and other lethal support to militias and other illegal armed groups, and cease sectarian rhetoric and other propaganda that could incite violence�.

It was a beginning — but not yet a major shift, as Washington Wire notes:

So they went, shook hands and chatted briefly. And that was the sum of the direct interaction between American and Iranian delegates at a long-awaited, day-long regional summit on Iraq today in Baghdad.

Many observers had predicted that the gathering — organized by the Iraqi government to seek help stabilizing the country — would actually be more noteworthy as a meeting place for the U.S. and Iran, which have kept a chilly distance since the two severed ties after the 1979 Iranian revolution.

But in the end the two sides merely had a quick “meet and greet� and then exchanged remarks within the larger forum. U.S. and Iranian officials said there were no private conversations of any substance. The U.S. delegation had a slightly longer chat with the Syrians, U.S. officials said.

Still, just because they may be talking doesn’t mean they’re exchanging words of friendship. The AP:

In their first direct talks since the Iraq war began, U.S. and Iranian envoys traded harsh words and blamed each other for the country’s crisis Saturday at a one-day international conference that some hoped would help end their 27-year diplomatic freeze.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki opened the conference with an appeal for all participants to help ease his country’s plight and prevent the violent conflict here from spilling over into the entire Middle East.

But the conference underscored the wide gulf between American and Iranian views over the nature of the crisis and the ways to end it.

During the talks, U.S. envoy David Satterfield pointed to his briefcase which he said contained documents proving Iran was arming Shiite Muslim militias in Iraq.

“Your accusations are merely a cover for your failures in Iraq,” Iran’s chief envoy Abbas Araghchi shot back, according to an official familiar to the discussions who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.

The U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, only said that American delegates exchanged views with the Iranians “directly and in the presence of others” during talks, which he described as “constructive and businesslike.”

But Labid Abbawi, a senior Iraqi Foreign Ministry official who attended the meeting, confirmed that an argument broke out between the Iranian and American envoys. He would not elaborate.

Meanwhile, Iran made it clear before the meeting that it viewed this event as a test of the United States’ intention, Reuters reports:

Iran sees a regional meeting in Baghdad as a “test” of whether the United States is serious in trying to solve Iraq’s problems, the head of Tehran’s delegation was quoted as saying ahead of Saturday’s conference.

Abbas Araghchi, deputy foreign minister for legal and international affairs, said before leaving Tehran that the main aim was to help improve security and reconstruction efforts in violence-racked Iraq, the ISNA news agency reported.

“We are heading to the meeting just to help Iraq’s government,” he said.

So what is to be made of this? It’s an important meeting because dialogue is better than no dialogue at all. And the fact that various nations are represented begins to shift the issues into regional ones where other countries could presumably exert their own cooling-off influence. The LA Times:

Like a frustrated in-law trying to reconcile a feuding couple, Iraq is hoping for a thaw in U.S.-Iran relations when representatives of the countries meet in Baghdad today.

Just getting the two to sit at the same table is a breakthrough, considering how unlikely the possibility seemed weeks ago. But analysts warn against unreasonable expectations. At best, they say, this first date is a chance to chip away at some of the ice coating Washington-Tehran relations, which became even frostier after the U.S. accused Iran of sending bombs to Iraqi Shiites attacking U.S. troops.

“That’s useful in and of itself,” said Jonathan Alterman of the Center for Strategic Studies in Washington. “Diplomacy is about processes, not successes. You get successes through processes.”

….Still, U.S. participation is seen by some as a major adjustment in Bush administration strategy.

“This meeting is incredibly important from a psychological point of view,” said Joost Hiltermann, a Middle East expert with the International Crisis Group in Amman, Jordan. Not only does it represent a sea change in U.S. policy, he said, it is bringing together neighbors who despite their differences want to see some good come to Iraq. “This is a very important basis for future talks.”

So, in the end, no matter what happens it’s likely to be more of a positive than a negative — although one thing the meeting will not be is a panacea.