WASHINGTON, March 26 (UPI) -- U.S. and Iranian officials held a key meeting the weekend before Operation Iraqi Freedom began to discuss co-operation between the two old adversaries in the event of a war.
On March 16, the President's envoy to the Iraqi opposition Zalmay Khalilzad met with senior Iranian officials in Geneva to finalize an agreement that would pledge Iran's assistance if any American pilots were downed in Iranian territory, according to two U.S. officials familiar with the meeting. That agreement also pledged that Tehran would not send its military into Iraq at any point during or after the conflict with Iraq, but allowed for a small number of militants associated with an Iranian armed and funded organization known as the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq -- or SCIRI -- to cross the border. Kurdish officials say the group has approximately 1,500 fighting men in northern Iraq alone.
The talks followed a lower level meeting in January. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Ryan Crocker met with Iran's deputy foreign minister Javad Zarif and some members of the country's Revolutionary Guards.
Khalilzad had tried to meet more senior members of Iran's military in February at an Iraqi opposition conference in the Kurdish controlled town of Salahuddin in northern Iraq, but the Iranians pulled out at the last minute.
All the while direct contacts between British diplomats and the Iranians have worked out many of the logistical aspects of the new war, according to State Department officials.
The United States broke formal diplomatic ties with Iran more than 20 years ago soon after the 1979 Islamic revolution when Iranian students captured the American Embassy in Tehran and took hostage the entire staff.
Since then, the two sides have established direct and indirect contacts with each other to discuss urgent issues, such as during the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan in October 2001 when Washington feared that al-Qaida terrorists could escape into neighboring Iran to avoid capture. Indeed, Iran is the chief supplier of cloth for the new military uniforms of the Afghan army.
But some Middle East experts warned against relying too much on Iranian cooperation. "They are probably imagining things if they think they can rely on the Iranians to tow the line with us," Edward Walker a former Assistant Secretary for Near East Affairs told United Press International in an interview last week. "It is doubtful they will seal the border for al-Qaida and stay out of the political mix in Iraq. The Iranians have their own national interests and it does not conform to ours. We are doing their job for them it only buys them so much."
Another European diplomat familiar with the discussions told UPI this week that the Iranians themselves are very nervous about American participation. "After the President's axis of evil speech, Iran is really only looking for an explicit statement from Washington that it will not be attacked."
Since Iran, which is the world's only Shiite state, also has a considerable influence on the Shiite population of southern Iraq, U.S. officials believe it can help them in winning over the Iraqi Shiites.
To this end, the United States has enlisted the help of SCIRI in leadership council for the Iraqi opposition front formed in northern Iraq in February. But things may not be going as well as hoped. Earlier this week, SCIRI's leader Mohammed Baqr al-Hakim announced that his men would fight U.S. troops if they stayed in Iraq after toppling Saddam Hussein. SCIRI was one of the main groups that organized the 1991 Shiite uprising against Saddam Hussein in the south in the aftermath of the Gulf War.
Another channel to the Iranian government is Ahmad Chalabi the founder of the Iraqi National Congress, a coalition of opposition groups that have included SCIRI at various points. Prior to a U.S. funded opposition conference in London in December, Chalabi and the two Kurdish leaders in northern Iraq met with senior Iranian intelligence and military leaders. After these meetings he confidently told the U.S. government that the Iranians were prepared to help liberate Iraq, according to one INC official who spoke to UPI at the time.
