Mullah Machinations

Iraq’s President Jalal Talabani has become an energetic supporter of talks between Iran and the United States on stabilizing his country. Talabani, a Kurd, has won admiration in certain quarters of the United States for his mature and persistent efforts to bring about reconciliation between Iraq’s once-dominant Sunnis and majority Shias.
It’s when Talabani joins Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Khameini in endorsing the opening of talks between the firm allies turned sworn enemies that things become murkier.
Undoubtedly, the post-Saddam Hussein empowerment of Iraqi Shias has raised the profile of Iran. Ayatollah Sistani and interim prime minister Ibrahim al Jaafari, among other Shia leaders, spent long years of exile in Iran during the Saddam era.
Such links alone cannot be a guarantor of friendship and amity. Years of exile in Iraq during the Shah’s reign didn’t stop Ayatollah Khomeini from waging war with Saddam Hussein’s regime.
With American forces entrenched in Afghanistan and Iraq, Iran certainly is feeling squeezed. The escalating row over Teheran’s nuclear program, western estimates that the mullahs are sheltering Al Qaeda leaders, including perhaps Osama bin Laden’s immediate relatives, and the pariah status decades of sanctions have imposed have contributed to this sudden change of heart. That’s the charitable explanation. If Ayatollah Khameini wants a deal with the “Great Satan” he continues to denounce, there can hardly be much piety in his purpose.
Washington, for its part, is wearied. The untold story of the Islamic Revolution is how the mullahs tricked President Jimmy Carter into switching American support from the Shah to the revolutionaries. The assortment of opposition figures like Mehdi Bazargan, Abol Hassan Bani Sadr, Karim Sanjabi and Sadegh Ghotbzadeh came in handy for Khomeini as the mullahs were consolidating their power. Ever since Iranian radicals overran the American Embassy, hard-line mullahs have remained dominant.
After much estrangement, the mullahs tricked the U.S. and the West into believing in the reformist credentials of former president Mohammed Khatami. After the 9/11 attacks, the Iranian theocracy allowed students to hold a vigil in memory of the dead. Clearly, this gesture won over the hearts of many Americans embittered by the humiliation of the hostage ordeal. The shrewd mullahs succeeded in buying time for their nuclear program and other adventures that may yet come to light.
Iranian exiles, including the former crown prince Reza Pahlavi, hardly have a forward-looking agenda. After the Pentagon’s misguided courtship of Ahmed Chalabi and Co. the Americans have recognized the resiliency that comes with on-the-ground experience.
The mullahs have craftily positioned themselves in a win-win position. They intend to use a modicum of cooperation in Iraq to bolster the image of themselves as responsible. If the nuclear prowess of a responsible country like India can win the support of Washington, why shouldn’t Teheran’s? Whether the United States will demonstrate the sagacity to see through the charade is a different matter.
As for Talabani, what does he have to lose? The longer the Shias and Sunnis are at each others’ throats, Iraq’s Kurds can have the best of all worlds. Roping in Teheran and Washington to directly sort out that part of the triangular conflict would ensure greater room for maneuver for the Kurds.
History and geography, after all, have conspired to bestow a level of respect and recognition on Iraqi Kurds that their brethren in Turkey, Syria and Iran can’t even dream of.