The U.S. and Iran’s Complex Relationship
BAGHDAD — American troops advising Iraqi security forces in restive Anbar Province are sharing a base with an Iranian-backed militia that once killed United States soldiers. Both are fighting the militants of the Islamic State.
Here in the capital, though, Tehran and Washington still line up on opposite sides. The United States is urging the Shiite- dominated Iraqi government to do more to enlist members of the Sunni minority against the Islamic State. Shiite-led Iran and its proxies are thwarting that effort.
The dichotomy illustrates the complexities of the relationship between the United States and Iran in places like Iraq, where the interests of the two rivals clash and converge. Now, after a deal to limit Iran’s nuclear program cleared its biggest congressional hurdle, the United States will have to navigate an increasingly complicated regional maze with an Iran newly empowered by international legitimacy and relief from economic sanctions.
What is more, there are also indications that the contacts between the two countries that accompanied the nuclear negotiations have begun to produce more areas of limited collaboration in Iraq, Afghanistan and, to a lesser extent, in Yemen.
Critics say that the nuclear deal will only embolden Iran to escalate its myriad proxy campaigns against the United States and its allies: arming Hezbollah and Hamas to fight Israel; deploying Iranian troops to defend President Bashar al-Assad of Syria; backing Houthi rebels in Yemen; and holding Lebanese politics hostage to its interests.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has complained that the deal will enrich his country’s greatest foe. American allies in the Sunni-led monarchies of the Persian Gulf warn of widening sectarian conflict.
Some analysts see a more collaborative relationship as a consequence of the negotiations leading to the nuclear deal.
“Both the Iranian and American governments are going to approach expanded dialogue very gingerly,” said James Dobbins, a senior fellow at the RAND Corporation. “But there will still be a gradual increase in at least communication between the two governments on areas beyond the nuclear issue.”
Afghanistan may be the place where there is the clearest poten- tial for collaboration. As the nuclear talks were gaining momentum last year, Iranian diplomats were working with Secretary of State John Kerry to seal a deal in Kabul to avert an electoral deadlock and form a new government in Afghanistan.
Both sides want to prevent the return of the Taliban and to block Al Qaeda from re- establishing safe havens. Tehran also worries about the heavy flow of Afghan opium and refugees into Iran, which shares a long border with Afghanistan, said Michael Kugelman, a researcher on South Asia at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington. “Their interests converge more in Afghanistan than either side may care to admit,” he said.
In Yemen, the United States has thrown its support behind a Saudi-led military intervention against a takeover by the Houthi movement, but has also dissented from Saudi claims that Iran is controlling the Houthis.
The Saudis have said they were forced to intervene to prevent Iran from dominating their southern neighbor. But there is little evidence that the Iranians have provided significant military support to the Houthis, said April Alley, a researcher with the International Crisis Group.
Iraq has been the bloodiest arena of the American-Iranian rivalry. But now the Americans communicate with the Iranians through an Iraqi military official to be sure that American- led airstrikes against the Islamic State do not hit the Iranian- backed militias fighting the same enemy.
Yet it is still a deeply uncomfortable situation. American officials acknowledge that the militias are essential to fighting the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. But they worry that the groups, especially in Anbar, are collecting intelligence on them on behalf of Iran and have pressed the Iraqis to remove the Kataib militia from the base.
The nuclear deal has raised hopes among Iraqi officials of closer cooperation between the two rivals, said Mowaffak al-Rubaie, an Iraqi lawmaker from a Shiite faction. “For the next phase they need to coordinate in a more formal way,” he said.
In practical terms, Iran will regain about $50 billion of assets from the sanctions relief, according to estimates by United States Treasury officials. But analysts say that money has never appeared to be a determining factor in Iranian policies; Tehran appears to have committed to its support for Mr. Assad in Syria or opposition to the Islamic State in Iraq as strategic necessities regardless of the cost.
Konstantinos Vardakis, a Greek diplomat who is the top European Union official stationed in Baghdad, said he hoped the nuclear deal would lead to broader talks with Iran about the future of both Iraq and Syria. “We need the Iranians to settle the situation,” he said, suggesting that “the door is open to address other issues.”
But Iran’s proxies in Lebanon and Iraq say they see no such solutions. All applaud the deal as a victory for Iran and maintain that their hostility to the United States remains undiminished.
Naeem al- Aboudi, the spokesman for an Iranian-backed militia in Iraq, brought up a favorite conspiracy theory of Iranian clients in Iraq: that the United States created the Islamic State and has little real interest in defeating it.
“The nuclear agreement is a diplomatic affair that we are not involved in,” Mr. Aboudi said. “We’ve had a problem with the United States for a long time.”
A nuclear deal may bring two longtime enemies closer.