A member of Kurdish security forces patrols for ISIS militants on the outskirts of Mosul, Iraq. June 22, 2014. Azad Lashkari/Reuters/Corbis
July 02, 2014
The United States’ 2003
invasion of Iraq was the strategic mistake of a generation, with a long tail of
consequence. It shook the foundation of the status quo in the Middle East and
forced everyone, including the U.S. and Iran, to re-evaluate their respective
positions. Today’s crisis in Iraq involving the Arab Sunni extremist group the
Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is hardly the first time that Washington
and Tehran have re-evaluated their positions publicly. Without greater
collaboration between the two, it will hardly be the last. After eleven years
of pursuing zero-sum security strategies in Iraq, both sides are slowly
admitting that they have badly overreached.
It has long been clear that Washington’s
overreach in Iraq was the invasion itself. Everything since has been blowback and
damage control. ISIS’s rise in Iraq and Syria is yet another reminder to
Washington that the real threat of Islamic extremism does not emanate from
Iran, but rather from Sunni extremists that make up a small but determined
minority. This is a lesson that should have been clear to Washington after ISIS
predecessor Al-Qaeda attacked the United States in 2001.
Only recently, Iran’s overreach has come
into focus: By seeking to advance its interests in concert with allies at the
expense of other foreign and domestic players, the Al-Maliki government has
lost control of more than a quarter of the country. Sunnis and Kurds continue
to take steps that threaten Iraq’s long-term territorial integrity. Instability
in the Middle East has been known to transcend borders, and for its part, Iran has
no interests in an anti-Iranian, anti-Shia political or military movement
establishing any sort of lasting presence next door.
Until recently, both sides operated in
Iraq under the same false premise: If you provide assistance from a position of
weakness, the other side interprets it as giving in—and you get negative
results. This exacerbated the deterioration of security in Iraq to the point
where Washington and Tehran are now choosing between bad and worse. The danger
of an Iraq beleaguered by political, religious and ethnic dysfunction with a
low desire to project power abroad is preferable to anti-American, anti-Iranian
militias seeking a caliphate from which they can carry out their stated desire
to attack both America and Iran.
Identifying their shared interests in
Iraq is the easy part. Now comes the hard part: addressing shared interests
requires some series of shared actions. To build any coalition that can win
against ISIS—or anyone else with a similar modus operandi—Washington and Tehran
both need the support of key power brokers in Iraq, and that includes one
another.
For over a decade, the predominant
train of thought in Washington and Tehran has been avoiding compromise because
each side ostensibly enjoyed plenty of maneuverability and other options to
choose from. When one side’s influence began to rise, the others’ would shrink.
The escalating crisis in Iraq—combined with growing regional instability—has rendered
this assumption untenable.
Rather than support or ignore a power
vacuum that the Kurds, Saudis, Turks, ISIS, and other extremist groups will
increasingly seek to fill, compromise is clearly the lesser of two evils. Both
sides have long held valuable cards to play in collaboration with one another if
a shared interest in dialogue came to the fore: valuable intelligence, deep
contacts with key political players, and influence within Iraq’s complex tribal
and religious networks.
Working together to stabilize Iraq
politically can reinforce the fragile power sharing arrangement between Shias,
Sunnis and Kurds, as well as provide a greater degree of accountability over
all three sides and their use of religious and ethnic differences to advance
political agendas. It would also be a huge step toward finally acknowledging an
inconvenient truth: both sides become more antagonistic when they are not
acknowledged as a stabilizing force in the region.
Perhaps most importantly, shared action
in Iraq can provide a platform for the future—a future in which Washington and
Tehran are able to engage in tactical or strategic collaboration without making
headlines around the world. If shared interests are acknowledged and acted upon,
the strategic significance of such a shift will likely force their conflicting
ideologies to take a backseat to geopolitical realities.
For example, Washington should use this
opportunity to test Tehran’s willingness to cease lethal support for anti-U.S.
groups in Iraq. Tehran should respond in kind by testing Washington’s
willingness to use Iraq as an incubator for building positive strategic
relations. Clearly defined rules of the game in Iraq can help avoid
inadvertently fighting one another, facilitate intelligence-sharing cooperation
and coordination on the capture of ISIS fighters, and provide a template that
can be used to varying degrees in Syria, Afghanistan, and other regional
conflicts.
Skeptics in Washington often point to
Ayatollah Khamenei and General Qassem Soleimani as prime examples of Iran’s
opposition to the idea of a strategic opening to the United States. This
assessment is less than honest. Both men have long insisted that any opening on
regional security issues must address both Iranian and American concerns. Any
Iranian offers of assistance to the U.S. will be packaged with an Iranian
insistence on exacting a price up front. Iran will not aid American interests
in Iraq without linking its assistance to America aiding Iranian interests –
and frankly, Washington operates on the same premise.
American and Iranian soldiers will not
be fighting side by side anytime soon, but it has long been clear that the two
sides need a sustained private channel to understand and influence their
respective decision-making processes – if such a private channel does not
already exist. When American generals say that collaboration is possible and
Iranian generals say it’s impossible, that usually means it’s already happening
at some level. Discussing Iraq on the sidelines of nuclear negotiations in
Vienna was a positive step, but much more needs to be done to stabilize Iraq
before its political, economic and social foundations crumble.
It is fair to point out that Washington
and Tehran are still at odds on many issues. But to truly be fair, one must
also acknowledge the slowly increasing receptivity to discussing those matters
systematically in an effort to resolve their outstanding issues. Durable
political solutions require the buy-in of those with the capacity to spoil
them. Now more than ever, the U.S. and Iran must find common cause in
stability—in Iraq and the region at large. Neither side can produce a durable
victory when key players are excluded from the dialogue.
Reza Marashi is research director at the National Iranian American Council in Washington, DC. He previously served in the Office of Iranian Affairs at the U.S. Department of State. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, Foreign Policy, Atlantic, and National Interest. On Twitter:@rezamarashi.