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US-Iran talks: Curb Your Enthusiasm

Prof. Kazem Kazerounian - 5/31/2007

On Monday, US and Iranian ambassadors in Iraq met to discuss Iraq's security, an event that has roused a sense of euphoria among proponents of engagement with Tehran's mullahs. Celebration should proceed with caution. The American envoy called the closed-door meeting "business-like," meaning we told them what we want and they told us what they want. We can extrapolate what each sides' demands were from what we have seen in published reports in Iran and elsewhere, but more importantly from what is going on in Iraq.

Iran's top demands were that the United States should expel the MEK (Iran's main opposition group) from Iraq to either Iran or elsewhere in the world, and then the Unites States should expel itself from Iraq! On the other hand, the United States demanded that Iran stop arming and financing militants who are attacking U.S. and Iraqi forces.

One should hope that the US Ambassador was not so shy as to fail to address Iran's commissioning armed brigades to instigate terrorist activities inside Iraq; smuggling weaponry and explosives to Iraq and placing them in the hands of a potpourri of terrorist groups to create an intimidating environment for Iraqis and an impossible situation for coalition forces; strengthening and utilizing centuries old religious connections to influence the public positions and political landscape; bribing hundreds of corrupt politicians to be Iran's voice within the newly installed government; conducting targeted terrorist activities to create ethnic and religious tensions; buying houses and business extensively in order to establish native proxy clusters; smuggling drugs to Iraq and promoting organized prostitution with intent to create controllable corruption and mafia-like webs; conducting targeted or mass executions to stop resistance to Iran's infiltration in Iraq; lighting cities and towns on fire to force strategic migrations of Iraqi citizens; destroying holy shrines to spur religious confrontations; facilitating travel and supplies for Al-Qaedeh through Iran; conducting direct or commissioned assaults on coalition forces to wear them down; forcing hejab (veil) on Iraqi women; etc.

Probably as the American Ambassador had his fingers crossed hoping that his Iranian counterpart agrees to US demands, the Iranian Ambassador was thinking that if the US gives in to his demands, Iran can cease its infiltration, since Tehran's mullahs would own the country [Iraq] by then.