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US secret talks with Iran over Afghanistan
http://www.todayszaman.com/columnist-302684-us-secret-talks-with-iran-over-afghanistan.html
31 December 2012, Monday
ABDULLAH BOZKURT
[email protected]
While I was in New Delhi over the weekend to participate in a regional
conference on Afghanistan, organized by the Delhi Policy Group, I had
a chance to talk to Pakistani diplomat Ashraf Jehangir Qazi on the
sidelines of meetings.
Qazi, who served as the special representative of the UN
secretary-general in Iraq between 2004 and 2007, told me his
recollections from his days in Baghdad. He recounted how he urged
James Baker, a former secretary of state who co-chaired the Iraq Study
Group (ISG), which was authorized by the US Congress to assess the
situation in Iraq in 2006, over a breakfast in Baghdad that the US
needed to talk directly to Iran to stabilize Iraq.
That advice later turned out to be one of the key recommendations on a
79-item to-do list in terms of policy change the 10-person ISG panel
made to the George W. Bush administration on how to tackle the grim
situation in Iraq. The White House initially balked at the idea of
talking to the Iranians, but later gave a green light to striking a
deal with Tehran. It led to major concessions to Tehran, while Iran
limited its support to the insurgency until after the US troops
departed from the country by the end of 2011. What Qazi did not
predict at the time is that Americans would go overboard in their
concessions to Tehran interests, eventually turning a major Arab
country into an Iranian proxy state at the expense of Turkey, Pakistan
and other Sunni monarchies in the Gulf.
Now it feels like déjà vu all over again at a critical juncture in
Afghanistan as the drawdown of the US-led NATO forces will be
finalized by the end of 2014. My Afghan and Pakistani sources tell me
that secret talks have been going on between the Americans and the
Iranians on the future of Afghanistan already, and that there have
been messages exchanged between the two governments using
intermediaries. Some who have intimate knowledge of the details on
several encounters between US and Iranian envoys described the nature
of the talks as very serious. That should not come as a surprise
because Iran has publicly announced that it is ready to sit down and
talk to the Americans on Afghanistan, although it denied having any
intention to widen the scope of talks beyond the Afghan issue, echoing
similar sentiment from the US side.
What Iran wants from the US first and foremost is the recognition of
Tehran's regional role. It demands acknowledgment of Iran's right to
be involved in the affairs of others that the mullah regime sees as
perfectly fit for their grand ideology in a triangle area from Central
Asia through the Horn of Africa all the way to the North Africa and
Middle East (MENA) region. For that, Iranian's top clerics, including
the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, are willing to make a
bargain with what they label as the `Great Satan,' America. The
anti-US and anti-Israel rhetoric we often hear from Iranian political
and religious leaders conveniently serves the realpolitik of Persian
interests of the establishment in Tehran.
The game is simple: The Iranian regime, using revolutionary ideologies
to advance national interests, funds all kinds of operations and
factions to potentially destabilize a country from within, mostly
using grassroots movements. Then others feel compelled to sit down and
negotiate with Iran to quell these activities, hoping that Iran,
acting as a rational state, would restrict provocative actions. That
is how the Iranian regime did it in Iraq before, forcing Washington to
make a secret agreement. This has benefitted Iran immensely. Now Iraqi
Shiite leader Nouri al-Maliki, who sits in the laps of the mullahs
back in Tehran, is calling the shots in Baghdad. Iranians are very
happy with this new setup, while Turkey and Sunni monarchies in the
Gulf, which are supposedly allies of the US, are left as simple
bystanders watching a major Arab country slipping towards the Iranian
axis.
It appears the US has picked up on signals from Tehran and moved
swiftly to capitalize on that before the 2014 deadline. I was at the
Herat conference in October as part of Track II discussions on
Afghanistan, sponsored by the Afghan Institute for Strategic Studies
and the Delhi Policy Group, when Hossein Sheikh ul-Islam, the senior
advisor to the Iranian parliament, the Majlis, and the director of its
International Affairs Department, announced that Iran is ready to talk
with the US. That prompted considerable interest from Washington, with
a team from the National Security Agency (NSA) coming to Afghanistan
to follow on that lead. Even though the White House denied story run
by The New York Times on Oct. 20 that said the US and Iran had agreed
in principle for the first time to one-on-one negotiations, those who
have intimate knowledge of the secret talks say that was not
unexpected as the news broke just two weeks before the presidential
elections.
For example, I was told that it took six weeks for Washington to clear
US Consul General Jillian Burns of the US Consulate in Herat to
participate in this panel discussion in Herat, attended by Sheikh
ul-Islam. The US, which opened the Herat consulate in June 2012, uses
this mission, located less than 50 miles from the Iranian border, to
monitor Iranian activities in Herat and its surrounding area. It makes
perfectly sense for the Americans to also put this consulate into use
by linking up with the Iranians away from the watchful eyes of the
world.
It is kind of ironic that Sheikh ul-Islam, a former deputy prime
minister and a former Iranian ambassador to Syria, has emerged as a
point man to deliver messages to the American side considering how he
was one of the militants who held Americans captive during the 1979-81
hostage crisis. As the Foreign Ministry's director for Arab affairs in
the 1980s, it was claimed that he coordinated the Islamic
Revolutionary Guards participation in Hezbollah operations. I had a
spat with him on Saturday in New Delhi in a panel discussion for
Afghan national TV during which he blamed terrorism, drug problems and
the refugee crisis on Afghans. He also accused the Afghan government
of allowing US troops to remain beyond the 2014 deadline and of
allowing Afghan territory to be used against his country, including
sending drones into Iranian airspace.
In response to his across-the-board criticism, I said Afghanistan's
immediate and extended neighbors should also focus on positive
accomplishments the Afghan people had achieved despite the terrible
ordeals and suffering in the last three decades. I also underlined
that Iran needed to respect the sovereignty of the Afghan nation and
that it has no business meddling in its neighbor's affairs, citing
excuses the Afghan nation has little or no control over. On a side
note, I said it was also cynical for him to complain about US drones
while his government hands over Iranian drones to Hezbollah in Lebanon
to probe Israeli airspace in clear violation of international law.
For the moment, India seems to be very happy to see Iran very closely
involved in Afghan affairs. I suppose the Indian government wants the
Iranians to deal with the Afghan folder rather than the Pakistanis,
with whom they have had decades-long problems and deep concerns. It
was evident how Indian government representatives turned the second
session of the meeting in New Delhi on Saturday into a
Pakistani-bashing session to which I had to react strongly. In
hindsight, maybe the Pakistani delegation's decision to protest the
session by not participating was the right one. The realignment of
India with Iran at the expense of Pakistan will have further
ramifications in the region, forcing Turkey and the Gulf monarchies to
re-evaluate their position vis-à-vis India. We need Pakistani
engagement to resolve issues in Afghanistan and beyond.
If the secret talks between Iran and the US, obviously encouraged by
India, lead to a repetition of the Iraqi scenario and fail to address
the concerns of third parties, this will lead to fundamentally
questioning American motives in the region, paving the way for Turkey
and others to seriously reassess their ties with the West, and
primarily with the US.
http://www.todayszaman.com/columnist-302684-us-secret-talks-with-iran-over-afghanistan.html
31 December 2012, Monday
ABDULLAH BOZKURT
[email protected]
While I was in New Delhi over the weekend to participate in a regional
conference on Afghanistan, organized by the Delhi Policy Group, I had
a chance to talk to Pakistani diplomat Ashraf Jehangir Qazi on the
sidelines of meetings.
Qazi, who served as the special representative of the UN
secretary-general in Iraq between 2004 and 2007, told me his
recollections from his days in Baghdad. He recounted how he urged
James Baker, a former secretary of state who co-chaired the Iraq Study
Group (ISG), which was authorized by the US Congress to assess the
situation in Iraq in 2006, over a breakfast in Baghdad that the US
needed to talk directly to Iran to stabilize Iraq.
That advice later turned out to be one of the key recommendations on a
79-item to-do list in terms of policy change the 10-person ISG panel
made to the George W. Bush administration on how to tackle the grim
situation in Iraq. The White House initially balked at the idea of
talking to the Iranians, but later gave a green light to striking a
deal with Tehran. It led to major concessions to Tehran, while Iran
limited its support to the insurgency until after the US troops
departed from the country by the end of 2011. What Qazi did not
predict at the time is that Americans would go overboard in their
concessions to Tehran interests, eventually turning a major Arab
country into an Iranian proxy state at the expense of Turkey, Pakistan
and other Sunni monarchies in the Gulf.
Now it feels like déjà vu all over again at a critical juncture in
Afghanistan as the drawdown of the US-led NATO forces will be
finalized by the end of 2014. My Afghan and Pakistani sources tell me
that secret talks have been going on between the Americans and the
Iranians on the future of Afghanistan already, and that there have
been messages exchanged between the two governments using
intermediaries. Some who have intimate knowledge of the details on
several encounters between US and Iranian envoys described the nature
of the talks as very serious. That should not come as a surprise
because Iran has publicly announced that it is ready to sit down and
talk to the Americans on Afghanistan, although it denied having any
intention to widen the scope of talks beyond the Afghan issue, echoing
similar sentiment from the US side.
What Iran wants from the US first and foremost is the recognition of
Tehran's regional role. It demands acknowledgment of Iran's right to
be involved in the affairs of others that the mullah regime sees as
perfectly fit for their grand ideology in a triangle area from Central
Asia through the Horn of Africa all the way to the North Africa and
Middle East (MENA) region. For that, Iranian's top clerics, including
the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, are willing to make a
bargain with what they label as the `Great Satan,' America. The
anti-US and anti-Israel rhetoric we often hear from Iranian political
and religious leaders conveniently serves the realpolitik of Persian
interests of the establishment in Tehran.
The game is simple: The Iranian regime, using revolutionary ideologies
to advance national interests, funds all kinds of operations and
factions to potentially destabilize a country from within, mostly
using grassroots movements. Then others feel compelled to sit down and
negotiate with Iran to quell these activities, hoping that Iran,
acting as a rational state, would restrict provocative actions. That
is how the Iranian regime did it in Iraq before, forcing Washington to
make a secret agreement. This has benefitted Iran immensely. Now Iraqi
Shiite leader Nouri al-Maliki, who sits in the laps of the mullahs
back in Tehran, is calling the shots in Baghdad. Iranians are very
happy with this new setup, while Turkey and Sunni monarchies in the
Gulf, which are supposedly allies of the US, are left as simple
bystanders watching a major Arab country slipping towards the Iranian
axis.
It appears the US has picked up on signals from Tehran and moved
swiftly to capitalize on that before the 2014 deadline. I was at the
Herat conference in October as part of Track II discussions on
Afghanistan, sponsored by the Afghan Institute for Strategic Studies
and the Delhi Policy Group, when Hossein Sheikh ul-Islam, the senior
advisor to the Iranian parliament, the Majlis, and the director of its
International Affairs Department, announced that Iran is ready to talk
with the US. That prompted considerable interest from Washington, with
a team from the National Security Agency (NSA) coming to Afghanistan
to follow on that lead. Even though the White House denied story run
by The New York Times on Oct. 20 that said the US and Iran had agreed
in principle for the first time to one-on-one negotiations, those who
have intimate knowledge of the secret talks say that was not
unexpected as the news broke just two weeks before the presidential
elections.
For example, I was told that it took six weeks for Washington to clear
US Consul General Jillian Burns of the US Consulate in Herat to
participate in this panel discussion in Herat, attended by Sheikh
ul-Islam. The US, which opened the Herat consulate in June 2012, uses
this mission, located less than 50 miles from the Iranian border, to
monitor Iranian activities in Herat and its surrounding area. It makes
perfectly sense for the Americans to also put this consulate into use
by linking up with the Iranians away from the watchful eyes of the
world.
It is kind of ironic that Sheikh ul-Islam, a former deputy prime
minister and a former Iranian ambassador to Syria, has emerged as a
point man to deliver messages to the American side considering how he
was one of the militants who held Americans captive during the 1979-81
hostage crisis. As the Foreign Ministry's director for Arab affairs in
the 1980s, it was claimed that he coordinated the Islamic
Revolutionary Guards participation in Hezbollah operations. I had a
spat with him on Saturday in New Delhi in a panel discussion for
Afghan national TV during which he blamed terrorism, drug problems and
the refugee crisis on Afghans. He also accused the Afghan government
of allowing US troops to remain beyond the 2014 deadline and of
allowing Afghan territory to be used against his country, including
sending drones into Iranian airspace.
In response to his across-the-board criticism, I said Afghanistan's
immediate and extended neighbors should also focus on positive
accomplishments the Afghan people had achieved despite the terrible
ordeals and suffering in the last three decades. I also underlined
that Iran needed to respect the sovereignty of the Afghan nation and
that it has no business meddling in its neighbor's affairs, citing
excuses the Afghan nation has little or no control over. On a side
note, I said it was also cynical for him to complain about US drones
while his government hands over Iranian drones to Hezbollah in Lebanon
to probe Israeli airspace in clear violation of international law.
For the moment, India seems to be very happy to see Iran very closely
involved in Afghan affairs. I suppose the Indian government wants the
Iranians to deal with the Afghan folder rather than the Pakistanis,
with whom they have had decades-long problems and deep concerns. It
was evident how Indian government representatives turned the second
session of the meeting in New Delhi on Saturday into a
Pakistani-bashing session to which I had to react strongly. In
hindsight, maybe the Pakistani delegation's decision to protest the
session by not participating was the right one. The realignment of
India with Iran at the expense of Pakistan will have further
ramifications in the region, forcing Turkey and the Gulf monarchies to
re-evaluate their position vis-à-vis India. We need Pakistani
engagement to resolve issues in Afghanistan and beyond.
If the secret talks between Iran and the US, obviously encouraged by
India, lead to a repetition of the Iraqi scenario and fail to address
the concerns of third parties, this will lead to fundamentally
questioning American motives in the region, paving the way for Turkey
and others to seriously reassess their ties with the West, and
primarily with the US.