Free Preview of Members-Only Content
To view the requested intelligence, you must be a Stratfor.com member.
In a meeting preceded by the diplomatic equivalent of a handful of cayenne pepper to the eye, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker met for seven hours on Tuesday with his Iranian counterpart, Hassan Kazemi Qomi, and an Iraqi delegation in Baghdad's Green Zone. This is the second round of direct public U.S.-Iranian talks over Iraq following a May 27 meeting, which also was held in the Iraqi capital.
Crocker astutely laid the groundwork for good relations ahead of the meeting, accusing the Iranians of increasing their backing of Shiite militia death squads, while the Iranian Foreign Ministry issued similarly warm statements lambasting the United States for using "psychological warfare."
Remember when Stratfor said that both sides ultimately want to bury the hatchet in order to prevent an Iraqi nightmare, but that they cannot do so until they have prepped their respective publics for regular contact with "the enemy"? Obviously, we are not there yet.
Luckily, the cayenne cloud was largely a smokescreen for what appears to be some real progress in the "full and frank" negotiations. While the talks theoretically were limited to Iraq, they quickly expanded to include other "bilateral issues" -- code for Iran's nuclear program, which Tehran hopes to use as a trump card for extracting concessions from Washington in Iraq.
Meanwhile, Iran separately -- and simultaneously -- agreed to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to send nuclear inspectors by the end of July to Iran's heavy-water reactor site in Arak. This kind of reactor is valued primarily for its ability to quickly produce large amounts of plutonium, an element that is critical to the production of mushroom clouds. It is no coincidence that Iran is putting up a cooperative front on the nuclear issue just as the Iraq talks move forward.
More important, Iran and the United States now appear to have made enough progress to begin implementing agreements from the May meeting. After the second round of talks, Crocker said the U.S., Iraqi and Iranian governments plan to create a security committee to discuss containing violence in Iraq, addressing everything from "support for violent militias" to al Qaeda to border security.
| Stratfor Members, please log in at the top left hand corner |
