Political Football

Monday, May 28, 2007

From IRAQ the MODEL blog
And so they met today!

Iran’s and America’s ambassadors to Baghdad met here today. Iran’s attitude didn’t only make the meeting unproductive, it made it insulting.Ignore the meaningless diplomatic pleasantries of “the meeting was positive” or “we’d like to meet you again in the future” and stuff like that that we hear after almost every meeting between diplomats.

Iran mocked Iraq and America today, their ambassador was here just to laugh at us and buy time for his regim by trying to fool us with his “we want to work this out through negotiations”.
Take a look at this part:

He [Qomi] said Iran had offered to help train and arm Iraq’s security forces, presently the job of the U.S. military…

He [Crocker] said he had told the Iranians they must end their support for the militias, stop supplying them with explosives and ammunition and rein in the activities of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Qods Force in Iraq.

The Iranians had rejected the allegations but did not respond in detail. In turn, they had criticized the “occupying” U.S. military’s training and equipping of the new Iraqi army, saying it was “inadequate to the challenges faced.”

How nice and how convenient! The Iranians want to train and arm our new army and they think they can do this better than America.

Thanks but no thanks Mr. Qomi! We know what kind of training and arming you’re good at and we’re frankly not interested.

All in All, I see that the regime in Iran doesn’t want to limit its interference in Iraq, it’s simply hoping to give this interference a cover of legitimacy, and that’s what I believe isn’t going to happen.

You may want to check out yesterday’s post to read my earlier thought prior to the meeting.

Posted by Omar

Sunday, May 27, 2007

Pre-Dialogue Dialogue

Iranian and American officials (their ambassadors to Baghdad as far as I know) will meet to talk tomorrow in Baghdad. The dialogue, however, started about a week ago. Let’s see what we have…-America sends two carrier groups the gulf, flexing muscles near Iran’s coast in broad daylight.

Iran sends us Sadr back three days before the planned meeting. What a wonderful gift!-Abdul Aziz al-Hakeem the leader of the largest bloc in the parliament is diagnosed with cancer but prefers a Tehran hospital over Houston medical center; perhaps the nurses are cuter in Tehran!

British and American forces conduct a series of concentrated offensives against top Mehdi army lieutenants in Basra and Sadr city comes under air-strikes for two days in a row.And perhaps there were smaller signs that I overlooked but this is the kind of pre-dialogue dialogue that’s been going on between Iran and America in these interesting times.

Each side wants to improve its position on the ground so that it enters the meeting with better cards at the negotiations table.I’m honestly not expecting much good from such meetings, not in the foreseeable future because the tone of their dialogue on the ground suggests that each side believes (or wants to show) that it has the upper hand in Iraq and the region.

I can’t see the slightest hint to concessions from either side so I strongly think that tomorrow’s meeting will be only about America and Iran telling each other what they want. The face to face part is the only difference.

It’s common wisdom that negotiations are always the hardest at the beginning, but they often become easier and productive with time. The problem is that common wisdom means very little when you are dealing with a revolutionary regime.

I’ll keep an eye on it though, maybe we’ll have something interesting to discuss tomorrow.

Posted by Omar

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