Opinion (Kenneth Pollack): Don’t Count on Iran to Pick Up the Pieces

The Iraq Study Group

AS anticipated, the Iraq Study Group has recommended that the United States begin talks with Iran to solicit its assistance in stabilizing Iraq. This recommendation seems so sensible that the Bush administration’s past reluctance to follow it is hard to fathom. Still, administration officials are right to counter that talking to Iran is not a policy, let alone a solution to our problems in Iraq.

The real questions are these: What do we say to the Iranians if we can get them to the table? What can they do in Iraq? What would they be willing to do in Iraq? And what will they want in return?

We should have engaged Iran in Iraq years ago. Before and during the war in Afghanistan, the Iranians were quite helpful to the United States. They shared our hatred of Al Qaeda and the Taliban, and they provided us with extensive assistance on intelligence, logistics, diplomacy and Afghan internal politics. After we turned our sights on Saddam Hussein, the Iranians suggested that they would be willing to cooperate on that too. Unfortunately, the Bush administration declined the offer, preferring to lump Tehran with Baghdad and Pyongyang in the “axis of evil.”

None of this should suggest that Iran was helping us for reasons other than blatant self-interest, or that it had suddenly given up its antipathy toward us. But it was demonstrating real pragmatism and being very helpful on issues of mutual concern, which should have been good enough.

Read the rest at the NY Times