Is a significant — versus cosmetic — policy shift in the works regarding the United States’s willingness to enter into talk with Iran? It sounds as if this could be the real thing. The Washington Post:
The United States agreed yesterday to join high-level talks with Iran and Syria on the future of Iraq, an abrupt shift in policy that opens the door to diplomatic dealings the White House had shunned in recent months despite mounting criticism.
The move was announced by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in testimony on Capitol Hill, after Iraq said it had invited neighboring states, the United States and other nations to a pair of regional conferences.
“I would note that the Iraqi government has invited all of its neighbors, including Syria and Iran, to attend both of these regional meetings,” Rice told the Senate Appropriations Committee. “We hope that all governments will seize this opportunity to improve the relations with Iraq and to work for peace and stability in the region.”
The first meeting, at the ambassadorial level, will be held next month. Then Rice will sit down at the table with the foreign ministers from Damascus and Tehran at a second meeting in April elsewhere in the region, possibly in Istanbul.
The Iraq Study Group’s proposals which seemed to be gathering dust contained a strong recommendation for regional talks led by the United States. There are several ways of looking at this. One way, is that it’s a policy shift cocooned in the face-saving device of not quite being an about-face: the U.S. will be there, but didn’t call the conference.
Some significant remarks about this seeming shift came from the ISG’s chairman Former Secretary of State James A. Baker III soon after this shift became known:
‘Former Secretary of State James A. Baker III said Tuesday the United States should be prepared to change course in its foreign policy, and “we are doing just that in Iraq.” A consistent foreign policy promotes stability, he said. “But when events change, we must be prepared to change with them.”
Baker spoke in a lecture series at the Library of Congress just a few hours after the Bush administration, in a reversal, said it would join an Iraq-sponsored “neighbors meeting” with Iran and Syria.
Baker went further in his speech and a question-and-answer session, urging the administration to expand Mideast peacemaking efforts beyond Israel and the Palestinians to include Syria.
And, as the New York Times notes, one of the biggest proponents of this meeting — for some time — has been Iraq’s government:
Critics of the administration have long said that it should do more to engage its regional rivals on a host of issues, including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Lebanon. That was the position of the Iraq Study Group, the high level commission that last year urged direct, unconditional talks that would include Iran and Syria.
While the newly scheduled meetings may not include direct negotiations between the United States and Iran, and are to focus strictly on stabilizing Iraq rather than other disputes, they could crack open a door to a diplomatic channel.
Iraqi officials had been pushing for such a meeting for several months, but Bush administration officials refused until the Iraqi government reached agreement on pressing domestic matters, including guidelines for nationwide distribution of oil revenue and foreign investment in the country’s immense oil industry, administration officials said. The new government of Iraq maintains regular ties with Iran.
The Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz’s story, which is compiled from various news agencies, notes: “The move reflects a change of approach by the Bush administration, which previously had resisted calls by members of Congress and by a bipartisan Iraq review group to include Iran and Syria in diplomatic talks on stabilizing Iraq.”
And Iran? It has agreed to the talks, CNN reports:
A top Iranian official said Wednesday that his country “will participate” in Iraq’s neighbors’ conference next month “if it will be of help to Baghdad,” according to a state-run Iranian news service.
Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council Ali Larijani made the remark, reported by the Islamic Republic News Agency. Larijani confirmed that Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari formally invited Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki to attend the conference.
This means the United States, Iran and Syria may, for the first time since the Iraq war began, meet face to face at a conference next month to discuss the situation in Iraq.
That was a key recommendation of the Iraq Study Group, a Washington advisory panel that examined U.S. policy in Iraq.
Zebari said the presence of the United States, Syria and Iran at the conference would be an ice-breaking diplomatic event that would pave the way to foster cooperative efforts to help Iraq.
NPR puts Rice’s announcement and exactly how much of a surprise it was in perspective:
Then came a muted bombshell:
“I would like to take one moment to talk about our diplomatic offensive,” she said.
The announcement she wanted to make was that in two weeks, the United States will join Iran at a round-table meeting in Iraq to talk about regional stability.
“I would note that the Iraqi government has invited all of its neighbors, including Syria and Iran, to attend both of these regional meetings,” Rice said. “We hope that all governments will seize this opportunity to improve their relations with Iraq and to work for peace and stability in the region.”
This is the same Iran that President Bush once dubbed as part of “an axis of evil” that included Iraq and North Korea.
And less than two weeks ago, the president had this to say about any possible dialogue with Iran:
“And we’ve made it very clear to the Iranians that if they would like to have a dialogue with the United States, there needs to be a verifiable suspension of their program.”
He was referring to Iran’s nuclear program.
The precise meaning of this shift, and what led up to it, will likely become known in coming days or weeks. But it certainly appears as if one key proposal of the Iraq Study Group is now about to happen, although not in the precise form as the group suggested.
A CROSS-SECTION OF OTHER OPINION (these are only excerpts, click on links to read whole posts):
—The Heretik: “Seize this opportunity? In the past Bush and Cheney would act like they were having a seizure if someone suggested talking to countries we disagree with. Legitemate threats could in no way be treated diplomatically. That would offer legitemacy to whole countries. If this new approach sounds familiar, it should. Talking to Syria and Iran were considered old ideas of an unrealistic past when Bush and Cheney thanked the Iraq Study Group for its work and told them to get out of the way toward the surge.”
—Ed Morrissey is (as usual) a must read. A tiny part 4 U:
So perhaps the Bush rejection of the ISG recommendation could be seen as tactical rather than strategic, but just the same, this is a reversal of their position on Iran at the least. The US and Syria have diplomatic relations — strained, but they exist — and so opening a dialogue with Damascus doesn’t represent as much of a climbdown as including Iran in regional talks does. The White House, especially Dick Cheney, had insisted that Iran could not be a viable partner for Iraqi security while it sponsored terrorism throughout the Middle East.
Somehow, that view has changed, and it could mean something significant in the balance of power in the Bush administration. It seems like Condoleezza Rice may have prevailed over the Vice President, whose influence appears to be waning in the last two years of the Bush presidency. The abrupt replacement of Donald Rumsfeld and the questionable resolution of the Korean crisis indicates a softening of the approach taken by the administration, at least in tone
–Matthew O’Keefe at The Gun Toting Liberal notes that the U.S. signed on only after the Iraq government agreed to some oil revenue issues:
Well now it’s clear to me why this is happening. There is money to be made in Iraq! Gunny, you can stop slapping me upside the head now. Thanks. Mike and Alex you can stop too! “Surge� didn’t read the Governor’s piece or mine. He was simply being “Surge� again.
Now that the Iraqi government has reached an agreement to share the wealth of it’s very profitable oil fields it is more than okay for the evil doers in the region to sit at a table and talk with our nation. Is it just me or is this the administration you have to always follow the flow of oil and money in order to find out what they will do next? If that is true then hypothetically, if the oil fields in Iraq started to run dry, President Bush would have our troops home in a matter of days!
—Steve Clemmons has a MUST READ analysis. Excerpt:
This could be a pre-meeting for a true regional conference that draws together all of the key stakeholders in and around Iraq, and that is a key pillar of the Iraq Study Group Report’s “New Diplomatic Offensive” proposal.
Time will tell whether this is meaningless flirtation — or whether this is a carefully crafted “confidence building measure” that could lead to more meaningful engagement between the US and Iran over outstanding issues — and between the US and Syria. This has the markings of European and Saudi stage direction.
—Crooks and Liars: “I shouldn’t be so flippant about this, because one of the things that aggravates me the most is Bush’s pig-headedness and inability to adjust to new information, however, I can’t help but get a little flip-flopping dig in there.”
—Q&O:
The complaint has been a ‘wrong direction’ in Iraq and the claim has been the “people have spoken” and the administration should heed their voice. This has been one of those complaints by Dems … we need to “talk” with the regional players, both friendly and not so friendly. Here it is. Will we hear further complaints or will Democrats actually get behind this effort and support it?
Or are Dems so tied to the “Iraq is lost and we need to get out of there” that they’ll criticize this as well?
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Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.