Tag: Iran

We Are Already Sort Of Allied With Iran

Flagging the above tweet, Jacob Siegel points to Iran’s deepening involvement in the ISIS conflict:

The photo reportedly shows the Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, commander of the Qods force, Tehran’s chief military strategist, and the man many American officials consider to be America’s most dangerous foe on the planet. His visit to the site underscores the convergence of U.S. and Iranian interests in Iraq, and Iran’s desire to be seen as orchestrating the efforts. Amerli was clearly a defeat for ISIS and a relief for the townspeople who had held off the group for six weeks. But it’s less clear what the alliance between U.S. airpower and Iranian-backed militias says about the vision guiding the mission in Iraq. Even leaving aside questions of a grand regional strategy for the Middle East—and how our track record suggests that U.S. led wars in Iraq can benefit Iran—its not clear how the precedent set in Amerli will serve the President’s more immediate goals for resolving the war in Iraq.

Juan Cole suspects Washington and Tehran are already coordinating their efforts to some extent:

US air strikes on ISIL in Iraq have alternated with Iranian air strikes on ISIL positions. It seems likely to me that the two air forces are coordinating in at least a minimal way, otherwise there would be a danger of them hitting each other rather than ISIL. … Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, is alleged to have just authorized Iranian forces to coordinate with American ones. The denials from other Iranian politicians are likely merely camouflage for a policy that would dismay Iran hardliners.

But Keating doubts anyone will acknowledge that partnership:

There are obviously key points of conflict between Iran and the United States, not least of which is the country’s controversial nuclear program. A new round of talks about that issue are set to begin in New York this month. Any open acknowledgment of cooperation between the countries with regards to ISIS would likely make the U.S. Congress, hardliners in Tehran, and the Israeli government go absolutely berserk. But if the two nations continue to escalate the fight against a common enemy, it’s going to require some level of coordination. I don’t see Iran being formally invited into Obama’s “coalition of the willing.”

Nor is Russia likely to be a formal partner. But it too may become a de facto ally in the fight against ISIS. Ishaan Tharoor highlights how ISIS, which is believed to include some 200 Chechen fighters, is now lobbing threats at Putin as well:

Here’s a slightly new geopolitical wrinkle. Earlier this week, the Islamic State issued a video challenging a powerful global leader. But this time, it was not President Obama or one of his counterparts in Europe. It was Russian President Vladimir Putin. In the video, fighters pose atop Russian military equipment, including a fighter jet, captured from the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. This is Agence France-Presse‘s transcription of what follows:

“This is a message to you, oh Vladimir Putin, these are the jets that you have sent to Bashar, we will send them to you, God willing, remember that,” said one fighter in Arabic, according to Russian-language captions provided in the video. “And we will liberate Chechnya and the entire Caucasus, God willing,” said the militant. “The Islamic State is and will be and it is expanding God willing.”

Is Khamenei Done With The Nuclear Talks?

by Dish Staff

The Supreme Leader has always been pessimistic about the negotiations between Tehran and Washington, but in a statement yesterday, he called them “useless”:

Speaking to Foreign Ministry officials, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei praised Iranian negotiators who have conducted the talks with the United States and five other world powers, and he did not call for abandoning them. But he appeared to give succor to Iranian hard-liners who are adamantly opposed to discussions that could lead to a scaling back of Iran’s nuclear program, which they insist is intended for peaceful purposes only. The remarks came two days after President Hassan Rouhani stirred controversy in Iran by calling opponents of the talks “cowards” and telling them to go to hell. Rouhani, considered a moderate, has been pushing for an agreement that would end the crippling economic sanctions against Iran. Khamenei has consistently been far more skeptical about the talks.

Reza Haghighatnejad highlights the apparent split between Khamenei and Rouhani:

In sharp contrast with Khamenei’s address earlier today, Rouhani has talked about the impact of eased sanctions, the practicalities of working with the U.S. to combat Islamic State insurgents in Iraq, the greater opportunities to tackle world issues.  It’s not only the nuclear program that the world needs to talk about, Rouhani’s camp suggests, and last year’s historic phone call between Rouhani and U.S. president Barack Obama was a symbol Western media–and Rouhani—gladly embraced. Rouhani has even sought out public opinion within Iran, commissioning a poll earlier this year to identify just what the ordinary Iranian public thought about increased contact with the West.

At the same time, the administration has been keen to show itself as tough, practical and resolute: Javad Zarif has said one of the most important outcomes of talks has been an American shift: U.S. officials now have a clearer understanding of what they can expect from Iran. According to Zarif, he and chief negotiator Abbas Araghchi have ensured that no new sanctions have been imposed over the last year—a view dismissed today by Khamenei in front of the world’s most influential diplomats. “They say these sanctions aren’t new, but actually they are,” Khamenei said, which proved that talks over sanctions have led to nothing.

Walter Russell Mead suspects that a “grand bargain” with Iran is a dangerous fantasy, regardless of our apparently aligned interests in Iraq:

[T]he perception that a breakthrough with Iran is just around the corner will encourage the President to slight or sacrifice the interests of traditional U.S. allies in the region. It will strengthen the hand of those in the Administration who tell the President that he should stay the course in the Middle East, pursuing a ‘grand bargain’ with Iran, and supporting ‘moderate Islamists’ and pro-Muslim Brotherhood governments in places like Qatar and Turkey, even if that alienates Saudi Arabia, Israel and Egypt.

If America takes this course, expect regional tensions to rise, rather than relax, even if things calm down in Baghdad. It’s not clear that the President’s goal of a grand bargain with Iran is within reach, or that it will deliver the kind of stability he hopes for. For one thing, it’s possible that the Iranians are less interested in reaching a pragmatic and mutually beneficial relationship with Washington than in using Obama’s hunger for a transformative and redeeming diplomatic success to lure him onto a risky and ultimately disastrous course.

Iran’s Crackdown On The Press

The WaPo’s reporter in Tehran, Jason Rezaian, and his wife Yeganeh Salehi, also a journalist, were arrested a couple weeks ago:

As one of few foreign correspondents in based in Iran, Rezaian’s reporting hardly breached the sensitivities that the Iranian ruling apparatus is known to crackdown upon. His last two articles for The Washington Post covered baseball in Iran (“In Iran, a spark of enthusiasm for America’s national pastime”) and coverage of the nuclear negotiations from Vienna (“World powers agree to extend talks with Iran”). He was arrested in his home, alongside his wife, upon his return from Vienna. …

It is unclear on what charges the Iranian-Americans are detained, as official state media have verified the arrests but not the reasons behind them. An unconfirmed report by Tasnim news website, associated with Revolutionary Guards, claimed the arrests were on suspicions of spying.

The Economist notes that “Iran has long been hostile to the media”:

Twenty-seven journalists are currently in jail in Iran, according to the International Federation of Journalists, a Brussels-based lobby. But in the wake of the election last year of Hassan Rohani as president pressure on the media eased. Several journalists were freed in the days after he took office.

That now appears to have changed. Mr Rezaian and his wife (pictured above) are part of a worrying new spate of arrests. On May 28th Saba Azarpeik, an Iranian writer, was detained after Etemad (“Trust” in Farsi), a reformist newspaper, published a testy exchange between her and Muhammad Sadegh Kooshky, a professor at Tehran University and a member of an anti-Rohani pressure group. Two months later Marzieh Rasouli, a writer on arts and culture, was sentenced to 50 lashes and two years in prison. Reporters Without Borders, a Paris-based organisation, says she and two other Iranian journalists, Parastoo Dokouhaki and Sahamoldin Borghani, were accused of collaborating with the BBC, which is seen as part of Britain’s spy network by some hardliners.

No one knows why Iran feels the need to crack down now.

Last week, Saeed Kamali Dehghan heard that six Iranian judges are leading the new crackdown on journalists and political activists:

In their testimonies, many prisoners have accused the six judges of acting on the instructions of top security officials and prison interrogators, and collaborating with the country’s intelligence ministry or the elite Revolutionary Guards. Several prisoners said the sort of sentences they were threatened with in interrogation sessions were later handed down in their trials, which they say points to close collaboration between judges and the intelligence apparatus.

Earlier this week, Haleh Esfandiari argued that Iran’s hard-liners are using the arrests “to undercut other countries’ confidence in [Rouhani’s] ability to deliver on promises Iran might make in a negotiated deal”:

The security agencies manage to discover spies and foreign plots whenever an Iranian government seeks a rapprochement with the West. In 1999, when the reformist Mohammad Khatami was president, 13 Iranian Jews from Shiraz and Isfahan, including a 16-year-old boy, were arrested on fabricated charges of spying for “the Zionist entity” and “world arrogance.” Ten were eventually sentenced to prison terms — a carefully calculated decision that defied the concerns of members of the European Union, and chilled Iran’s relations with them.

Mr. Khatami’s failure to take a stand against a trial that was widely regarded as farcical left him looking weak, as did his earlier failure to speak up when a political ally, Gholamhossein Karbaschi, the mayor of Tehran, was tried and sentenced on fabricated corruption charges. Those two events only encouraged his opponents to thwart the president in other ways, further weakening faith abroad that he had the clout within Iran’s political system — and most important, with its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — to withstand pressure from the hard-liners.

Time To Quit Babysitting The Middle East?

In a long and wide-ranging interview with David Rothkopf, Zbigniew Brzezinski opines on how the US should engage the Middle East today:

I think the whole region now, in terms of the sectarian impulses and sectarian intolerance, is not a place in which America ought to try to be preeminent. I think we ought to pursue a policy in which we recognize the fact that the problems there are likely to persist and escalate and spread more widely. The two countries that will be most affected by these developments over time are China and Russia — because of their regional interests, vulnerabilities to terrorism, and strategic interests in global energy markets. And therefore it should be in their interest to work with us also, and we should be willing to play with them, but not assume sole responsibility for managing a region that we can neither control nor comprehend.

He also thinks it’s wiser to pursue accommodation with Iran than to continue treating it as a greater threat than it really is:

I see Iran as an authentic nation-state. And that authentic identity gives it cohesion, which most of the Middle East lacks. In that sense, it’s a more solidly defined state than, let’s say, Egypt, which is similar and — but doesn’t have yet authentic, real cohesion. The problem with the Iranian regime of course is, one, its unsettling effects on the Sunnis, particularly Saudi Arabia, and, secondly, its potential threat to Israel.

The question is, how do you best solve that? I certainly don’t accept the notion that the best solution is all options are on the table, which is the politest way of saying we’re going to go to war if we don’t solve the nuclear problem quickly. The fact of the matter is Israel has an effective nuclear monopoly in the region, and it will have that for a long time. And one thing that the Iranians are certain not to do is to undertake some suicidal mission the moment they have one bomb. So the notion that’s been publicized in America that there could be a crazy Iranian rush to have the bomb in nine months is, to me, meaningless.

Putting Off The Iran Deal

Over the weekend, negotiations with Iran were given a four-month extension. The state of play:

The six powers want Iran to dramatically reduce its nuclear programme for a lengthy period of time and agree to more intrusive UN inspections. This would expand the time needed for Tehran to develop a nuclear weapon, while giving the world ample warning of any such “breakout” push.

The two sides are believed to have narrowed their positions in recent weeks on a few issues such as the Arak reactor, which could give Iran weapons-grade plutonium, and enhanced inspections. But they remain far apart on the key issue of Iran’s capacities to enrich uranium, a process which can produce fuel for reactors but also the core of a nuclear bomb.

The administration is trying to stay upbeat:

Obama administration officials insist that the talks have made major progress that justified giving negotiators until November to pursue a final deal. In a statement, Secretary of State John Kerry said“the very real prospect of reaching a good agreement that achieves our objectives necessitates that we seek more time.”

The Senate, however, remains a wild card – and AIPAC has been doing its usual work to buttress the case for war and for scuttling any agreement. The problem there, it seems to me, is that the necessarily private diplomacy has not allowed for a more robust and public discussion as to the costs and benefits. My own view is that the American public could be persuaded of the sanity of the least-worst option when it comes to preventing Iran getting a nuclear bomb; but the administration has been timid and defensive in its public outreach. Maybe that would change after a possible agreement. But it may be too late by then.

Majid Rafizadeh believes, for his part, that “the gaps between the six world powers and Iran would more likely require more than four months of extensions as well as a significant shift in Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s stance on his government’s nuclear program, or a remarkable change in the six world power’s stance”:

Considering the intricacies and examining Iran’s nuclear file and Tehran’s defiance, it becomes evident that the four month extension of diplomatic negotiations is barely enough to resolve these major hurdles.

The major barriers between the P5+1 (mainly the Western members: France, United Kingdom, Germany and the United States) and the Islamic Republic come down to the restriction of Iran’s production of plutonium, the dismantlement of crucial segments of the uranium enrichment program, the limiting of stockpiling and production, the question of Fordow, its underground nuclear facility center, the extent as to how the Islamic Republic should provide data with regards to its development, what type of nuclear research can be carried out, and how many centrifuges Iran can retain.

Tamara Wittes heard from Israelis that they are “worried that an extension would give the Iranians more time to exploit differences within the P5+1 and erode the sanctions regime.” But:

[I]t’s still important to evaluate this four-month extension in light of the alternatives. A collapse of the talks driven by U.S. dissatisfaction would have been even more likely to split the P5+1, and more likely to lead key states to soften their sanctions commitments. At the same time, the end of the interim deal would have left Iran’s enrichment and other nuclear activities unconstrained and largely unmonitored. It would have led, therefore, to a rapid collapse of the existing international pressure/containment strategy and a rapid escalation in the threat posed by Iran — and thus a push toward military force.

Meanwhile, Josh Rogin fears Russia will play spoiler:

[If] Putin decides that retaliating against the U.S. and ruining Obama’s foreign policy legacy is more important than sealing a pact with Iran, the whole thing could unravel. The shooting down of MH17 has escalated the diplomatic war between Washington and Moscow and made that scenario more likely because it could result in more sanctions and legal action against the Russian government.

It’s a Rubik’s cube. The odds are long.

The Heavy Cost Of Iranian Sanctions

Extends to the US:

A new study published this week by the National Iranian American Council argues that the various trade sanctions the United States has maintained on Iran for more than a decade actually hurts the American economy. The NIAC, a U.S.-based organization that pushes for a peaceful resolution of differences between Washington and Tehran, calculated that between 1995 and 2012, the United States has forfeited between $135 billion and $175 billion in export revenue as a consequence of not doing business with the Islamic Republic. …

In the United States alone, write researcher Jonathan Leslie, NIAC director of research Reza Marashi, and NIAC president Trita Parsi, “this lost export revenue translates into between 51,043 and 66,436 job opportunities lost per year on average. In 2008 alone, as many as 214,657 to 279,389 job opportunities were relinquished.”

Natasha Schmidt talks with Trita Parsi about the study. Schmidt asserts that  lifting sanctions will leave the international community “with very little leverage when dealing with Iran on a range of issues, from the nuclear program to human rights.” Parsi disputes this:

On the contrary, the West has very little leverage precisely because there is so little interaction. If the U.S. had not eliminated its trade with Iran in 1995 and if in 2009 there actually was a significant American presence in Iran, do you think the Iranian government would have had a harder or easier time to cheat in the elections? Would the US have had more or less leverage? Part of the reason the US had so little leverage in 2009 is because it had nothing in Iran. No embassy, no diplomats, no companies—no Americans. That’s no guarantee that it would have used its leverage constructively, but it is very difficult to argue that America’s complete absence from Iran has given it more leverage.

 

Forced To Marry At 15

Naimeh Doostdar highlights a troubling trend in Iran:

According to research conducted by [the advocacy group Justice for Iran], which covers 2006-2007 and 2013-2014, the rate of marriage for girls below 15 years of age is on the rise. Statistics published by Iran’s National Organization for Civil Registration reveal that, between March and December 2013, more than five percent of married females were below the age of 15. The same figures reveal that, among the registered marriages in Iran, more than one third of women were below the age of 19.

But these are official figures only, provided for registered marriages. There are strong indicators that the actual numbers for underage marriage are higher, especially because the statistics released by the government do not include those marriages entered into by young women aged between 18 and 19.

Why is underage marriage on the rise in Iran? There are a number of reasons:

tradition and religious culture are two major factors. Some families believe an early marriage can protect them: their daughters will not have the opportunity to be led astray, bringing shame and dishonor to the family. In other cases, poverty plays a role: a daughter is simply sold off for money because her family cannot afford to feed her.

In parts of Iran, some believe that children must be sacrificed to forced marriages in order to maintain tribal bonds. Among some of these communities, there’s a traditional belief that a girl should not menstruate while still living in her father’s house. In bigger cities, these traditions manifest themselves differently. One family marries off a young girl because she has been reading a romantic novel, while another girl is forced into early marriage because she has been caught talking to her boyfriend on the phone.

Girls living in urban areas tend to reject the idea of underage marriage—but it seems that the official view is somewhat different. Some prominent public figures—among them former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad—have tried to normalize or even promote underage marriage, viewing it as somehow beneficial to society. In 2009, when the average age of marriage rose to 24 for women and 26 for men, Ahmadinejad made his views known: “I believe that the right age of marriage for women is 16, 17 or 18, when girls have just blossomed.”

There Go Those Pesky Aligned Interests Again …

Iraq isn’t the only place where America and Iran are fast becoming best frenemies. “When it comes to Afghanistan,” Michael Kugelman argues, “Tehran and Washington tend to see eye to eye on many core issues, including the Taliban”:

There’s good reason to believe that Tehran wants a stable Afghanistan. Greater instability would intensify narcotics trafficking. Additionally, it would lead to further influxes of Afghan refugees (only Pakistan has more). In recent years, these immigrants have been increasingly unwelcome in Iran, and many have been deported. Tehran also likely worries that a deteriorating Afghan security environment would embolden anti-Shia forces, including the Pakistani organization Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, whose commanders vow to march into Afghanistan when international troops depart. Though Iran publicly opposes any U.S. troops in Afghanistan, in private it would probably happily accept the presence of a residual post-2014 force.

Tehran also shares the U.S. objective of an Afghanistan that is more integrated with South and Central Asia. Iran has pursued rail, pipeline, and trade projects meant to better link Central Asian states. It is also cooperating with India on the construction of a port that would facilitate more Indian trade with Afghanistan and Central Asia (the Chabahar port would enable India to bypass longer routes through Pakistan). These efforts dovetail with Washington’s “New Silk Road” initiative, which aims to develop regional energy markets in South and Central Asia and more broadly to boost cross-border trade and transit across these regions. However, U.S. sanctions on Iran have prevented Tehran from obtaining international financing for some of its projects. Phasing out these sanctions — a possible upshot of improved bilateral relations — could bring in more financing, and allow regional integration initiatives to truly take off.

A Hail Mary Pass From The Iran Hawks

With the July 20 deadline for a final agreement looming, John Kerry returned to Vienna yesterday for another round of nuclear negotiations with his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif, saying “very significant gaps” still remain between Washington and Tehran’s positions. Opponents of a deal have already moved to preempt any possible success in Vienna, with House Foreign Relations Committee chair Ed Royce and ranking Democrat Eliot Engel circulating a letter

demanding that Obama consult Congress more closely on the ongoing negotiations and suggesting that Iran will have to satisfy Congressional demands on human rights, terrorism, ballistic missile development, and other issues unrelated to the ongoing nuclear negotiations before it will approve major sanctions relief. …

Of course, President Barack Obama himself can provide a certain degree of sanctions relief under executive order as he no doubt intends to if a deal is struck. And there is no doubt that Congress has a role to play in lifting sanctions. But the letter’s assertion that there is no exclusively defined “nuclear-related” sanction against Iran under US law and that any relief can only be extended by addressing a host of non-nuclear-related issues appears calculated to sow doubts about Obama’s ability to deliver among Iran’s leadership, thus strengthening hard-liners in Tehran who argue that Washington simply cannot be trusted.

The messaging continued on the Sunday talk show circuit. After Zarif went on “Meet the Press” to reiterate that Iran sees no benefit in developing a nuclear weapon, hawk-in-chief Benjamin Netanyahu, on “Fox News Sunday”, called that “a joke.” Speaking of the Iran hawks, James Traub urges Obama to “tell them — politely of course — to go to hell”:

After years of inaction and thunderous polemic, the negotiations of the past year have been remarkably professional. A report by the Arms Control Association lists 31 obligations that Iran undertook when it signed the so-called Joint Plan of Action; all but two are completed or in full compliance. Critically, Iran has agreed to stop enriching uranium at 20 percent, to dilute its existing stock of highly enriched uranium, and to allow regular inspections of its nuclear facilities by the International Atomic Energy Agency. The West, for its part, has made good on its promises of sanctions relief. …

Failure is still as likely as not. Very powerful forces in Iran are ideologically committed to an adversarial relationship with the West; others have earned a fortune in Iran’s isolated economy, and would lose out were the country to open up. Iranian negotiators continue to speak as if both sides must make equal compromises, when in fact the onus is on Tehran to comply with the NPT. Yet the Iranian people elected Rouhani to bring an end to their isolation and deprivation, and he knows — and presumably the supreme leader knows, too — that failure to reach a deal threatens Iran’s future, and perhaps the revolution as well.

Previous Dish on the latest round of Iran talks here and here.

Washington And Tehran’s Eleven-Dimensional Chess Game

In an interview with Chotiner on Iran’s role in the Iraq crisis, Vali Nasr argues that Iraq now has a stake in the Iranian nuclear negotiations:

[I]t could hurt Iraq first of all if the U.S. and Iran stop talking to each other altogether and there’s no more positive momentum in the process. It’s much more difficult to say, “ok let’s forget about this gargantuan issue on which we failed, let’s focus on this other issue.” So you’re gonna make it much more difficult. The nuclear issue has now become the pivot of U.S.-Iran relations: It either creates an environment in which they can have constructive engagement more broadly, or not. Iran is going to follow its own policy, completely separate from the United States. But the irony is, unlike Syria, in Iraq, Iran’s independent policy is much more in line with the United States’, whereas in Syria they were clearly on opposite sides. …

But Nader Hashemi argues that there is “no connection whatsoever” between the nuclear and Iraq/Syria tracks when it comes to American-Iranian relations:

For 35 years, the two sides have been so distant. Getting to a nuclear deal—if we can actually get there—will be a huge accomplishment. I don’t think it necessarily means that there is going to be an agreement on any other regional issues.

Now it’s pretty clear that because of what’s happening in Iraq today there is a convergence of interests between the US position and the Iranian position. They both want to see ISIS defeated. You’re even seeing, for the first time, American senators saying, “Look, during World War II we allied ourselves with Stalin to defeat Hitler, maybe we can do the same thing in the context of Iraq.”

I don’t see anything coming of that. The United States may, at most, just look the other way while Iran’s Revolutionary Guards play a role.

That’s my hope as well. It seems blindingly obvious to me that, if the president wants ISIS to fail, the last thing on earth he should be doing is funding or training their “moderate” allies. What he should be doing is shifting toward Assad in the Syrian civil war by not arming the rebels. Assad, after all, is the main force taking on the Jihadist loons. Les Gelb is as smart as ever on this:

Instead of capitalizing on Mr. Assad’s anti-jihadi instincts, the Obama team now proposes to do what it has resisted doing for almost three years — to send hundreds of millions of dollars in arms aid for the Sunni rebels battling the Assad government. This move has American priorities backward. It will turn Mr. Assad away from the jihadis in Iraq, and back to fighting American-backed rebels in Syria.

The greatest threat to American interests in the region is ISIS, not Mr. Assad. To fight this enemy, Mr. Obama needs to call on others similarly threatened: Iran, Russia, Iraqi Shiites and Kurds, Jordan, Turkey — and above all, the political leader with the best-armed forces in the region, Mr. Assad. Part of the deal would need to be that the Syrian regime and the rebels largely leave each other alone.

Hashemi’s colleague Danny Postel adds that the nuclear talks actually hindered Washington from engaging Iran more actively on Syria:

Kenneth Roth, the Executive Director of Human Rights Watch, has argued that the United States might have been able to work with Iran and Russia to nudge the Assad regime at least on humanitarian issues—allowing food and medicine in to besieged areas, for example. But because of the nuclear negotiations, the U.S. was not willing to push either Russia or Iran on anything related to Syria, because getting that nuclear deal done is so precarious, it faces such opposition in both the US Congress and among the hardliners in Iran, and this might be the only chance, with a reformist in Tehran, and a liberal in Washington, maybe in a generation, when this could happen.

One of the senior Iranian foreign policy leaders, a former nuclear negotiator, said that had the United States bombed Assad last summer after he used sarin gas in Damascus, that Iran would have broken off the secret nuclear negotiations that were taking place in Oman.

In a wide-ranging interview the Dish linked to last week, Tom Ricks expressed doubts about US-Iran cooperation on Iraq, because Iran has already gotten pretty much everything it wants out of its neighbor:

I think Iran has played the long game very well and in 2002 and 2003, they faced the ugly prospect of having American surrogate states, American supported states, on their western border and eastern border. And they have managed, through diplomacy and through the Revolutionary Guard’s actions, to ensure that that didn’t happen. I’m told that they basically went around and threatened a lot of Iraqi politicians in recent years. “You mess with us, and you may leave with an accident.” I’m told that they paid a lot of people a lot of money to ensure that the Status of Forces Agreement would never pass the Iraqi parliament. And I think Iran has achieved its goals. It doesn’t want to control Iraq. And if it winds up with control of a Shiite rump state and all of Iraq’s—or most of Iraq’s—non-Kurdish oil, that’s not a bad deal for Iran.