U.S. tells Iran face to face: Stop supporting militias !

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POSTED: 12:37 p.m. EDT, May 28, 2007

STORY HIGHLIGHTS:

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The United States told Iran on Monday its support for militias fighting in Iraq needs to cease, said Ryan Crocker, U.S. ambassador to Iraq.
Crocker spoke at a news conference after a meeting with Iranian diplomats in Baghdad -- the first public and formal meeting between U.S. and Iranian representatives since the United States cut off diplomatic relations 27 years ago.
Crocker told reporters that in terms of policy for Iraq "there isn't much to argue about." But he said Iran needs to bring its actions in line with its "declaratory policy." (Watch what U.S., Iran had to say about each other )
"I laid out before the Iranians a number of our direct specific concerns about their behavior in Iraq," Crocker said. "Their support for militias that are fighting both the Iraqi security forces and coalition forces; the fact that a lot of the explosives and ammunition that are used by these groups are coming in from Iran; that such activities led by the [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] Quds Force needed to cease and that we would be looking for results."
Iran has repeatedly denied U.S. accusations that it is fomenting violence in Iraq.
Crocker said the Iranians did not respond directly on Monday to the U.S. allegations.
"The Iranians did not go into any great detail," he said. "They made the assertion that the coalition presence was an occupation and that the effort to train and equip the Iraqi security forces had been inadequate to the challenges faced.
"We of course responded on both points, making clear that coalition forces are here at the Iraqi government's invitation and under [U.N.] Security Council authorities, and that we have put literally billions of dollars into training and equipping an increasingly capable set of Iraqi security forces." (Watch Crocker describe 'businesslike' talks )
Crocker said the Iranian delegation proposed a trilateral mechanism to coordinate on security matters in Iraq. He said officials in Washington would have to consider whether to pursue that idea.
The Iranian ambassador told The Associated Press after the session that another meeting of the three nations will be held in Iraq within a month.
Crocker did not confirm that there would be a second meeting.
"The Iraqi government said it would extend an invitation in the period ahead for another meeting," he said. "We'll obviously consider that invitation when we receive it."
Crocker characterized the talks as "businesslike."
"We both laid out our support for the government of [Iraqi] Prime Minister [Nuri al-] Maliki as he undertakes a number of very difficult challenges," he said.
Iranian Ambassador to Iraq Hassan Kazemi Qomi also told the AP that he said in the meeting that Tehran was prepared to train and equip the Iraqi army and police to create "a new military and security structure."
Iran has offered before to train Iraqi forces and provide them with equipment.
Crocker said the Iraqi representatives "led the discussions" and that overall, "the talks proceeded positively."
No topics outside of Iraq were discussed, he said.
No talk of detainees, Iran's nuclear ambitions

Among the contentious issues not discussed were Iranian-Americans being held by Tehran, and Iranians detained by the U.S. in Iraq.
Tehran recently charged Haleh Esfandiari, one of four Iranian-Americans detained in Tehran, with conducting activities against the Iranian government, a charge dismissed by Washington. (Watch Esfandiari's representative describe Iranian jail cell )
The State Department repeatedly has called for Esfandiari's release as well as for more information about three other Iranian-Americans who have been detained, imprisoned or had their passports revoked.
In addition, Robert Levinson, an American and retired FBI agent, has been missing since March 8, when he was last seen on Iran's Kish Island.
The U.S. military is holding seven "Iranian intelligence service personnel" in Iraq, spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell told CNN in an interview taped Friday.
Tehran has referred to five of the Iranians who were arrested in January as "diplomats" and is seeking their release.
Also left unmentioned at Monday's meeting was the international showdown between Iran and much of the West, led by the United States, over Tehran's nuclear ambitions.
A report issued Wednesday by the United Nations' nuclear watchdog -- the International Atomic Energy Agency -- said Iran has not only ignored the call to halt its nuclear work but has also increased its activities.
That prompted U.S. and British diplomats at the United Nations to announce they would press ahead for new sanctions against Iran. The U.N. Security Council has so far imposed two rounds of limited sanctions on Iran.
Talks mark rare meeting

The Iraq Study Group late last year called on the Bush administration to initiate talks with Iran and Syria.
The United States broke off diplomatic ties with Iran in April 1980 in the midst of the seizure of the U.S. Embassy. Iranian students occupied the embassy from November 1979 until January 1981, when they released the remaining 52 hostages.
While Monday marks the first time U.S. and Iranian diplomats have met bilaterally, they have taken part in informal meetings with Iraq's neighbors in recent months.


U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker, left, meets with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, at head of table, and Iranian Ambassador Hassan Kazemi Qomi, right, on Monday.

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Since 2001, President Bush has radically revised the rules of the game. From the beginning, the neoconservative architects of Bush’s policy intended for the war that began in Afghanistan and expanded to Iraq to go on, in a dominolike series of forced regime change, revolution, and even war, to Iran and Syria, Saudi Arabia, and beyond. Iran, in particular, was always seen as the next step after Iraq. The original idea was that if the United States toppled Saddam Hussein and installed in Baghdad a regime dominated by Kurdish and Shiite puppets, Iran would be caught between U.S. forces to its west in Iraq and to its east in Afghanistan. And because both Shiites and Kurds have allies inside Iran, and because Iraqi Shiite religious leaders have intimate connections with the ruling Iranian theocracy, the skids would be greased for a U.S.-inspired overthrow of the Iranian government—or so Bush and Cheney believed.

Needless to say, things haven’t exactly gone according to plan. Still, it’s far too early to write off the impact of 130,000 U.S. soldiers in a country the size of Iraq, backed by a president convinced that he can still pull out a victory, especially if the troops stay for another five years or more. And if the United States launches the sort of bombing campaign against Iran that is being considered—involving attacks against not just nuclear research facilities but also airfields, command and control centers, and other intelligence and military targets—to say that the consequences would be unpredictable is an understatement. The administration and many of its supporters are apparently ready to take the gamble that after an armed confrontation with Iran, a moderate, pro-American regime might emerge from the wreckage. Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA officer and fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, is explicit on that score. “I don’t disagree [about] the convulsive effects that a strike would have. I actually think that it would be in the end a healthy thing for Iran internally.”

Not surprisingly, Russia and China have a different perspective. Moscow and Beijing, neither of which wants Iran to obtain nuclear weapons, nevertheless do not see Tehran as a threat. To them, the country’s vast reserves of oil and natural gas make it a natural ally. Both Russian and Chinese oil companies had enormous development and supply contracts with Baghdad under Saddam Hussein, deals that are worthless in an Iraq controlled by the United States. They might be forgiven for thinking that Iran, too, would be off-limits to them if Bush succeeds.

For China’s economic future, Iran and the region are essential. As recently as 1992, China was an oil-exporting country, but since then it has become a voracious importer of oil and gas. (Indeed, China’s demand for oil is the leading factor in pushing prices from $10 to $20 a barrel to around $75 a barrel today.) In Iran, China has signed a series of gargantuan deals, including a 25-year contract reported to be worth $100 billion between Iran and the Chinese state-owned energy company Sinopec. China is also deeply engaged with Russia’s oil industry and with Central Asian oil exporters in constructing a web of gas and oil pipelines throughout the region. President Vladimir Putin of Russia and President Hu Jintao of China have made energy the centerpiece of Russian-Chinese relations. Russia’s Rosneft oil company and China National Petroleum Co., two state-owned conglomerates, have negotiated plans for Russia to supply about 10 percent of China’s oil, and the Russian gas giant Gazprom is talking to China about building two huge new gas pipelines with a total capacity of 80 billion cubic meters a year. Last year, the Asia Times heralded the emergence of a strategic “new triangle comprised of China, Iran, and Russia.”

Since 2001, Russia and China have watched America’s heavy-handed push into the Middle East and Central Asia with suspicion and alarm. Together, they and four Central Asian countries—Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan—have created the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a regional security body that has emerged as a counterweight to U.S. influence in the region. Last July, the organization issued a declaration demanding the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Central Asia; by the end of 2005, Uzbekistan had kicked the United States out of its Karshi-Khanabad air base, and soon Kyrgyzstan may evict the U.S. from its Manas air base, both head-on challenges to the administration in countries that Washington considers essential to its influence in Central Asia. This summer, the SCO may agree to extend a membership offer to Iran.

Meanwhile, U.S. relations with both China and Russia are edging toward outright hostility. With Beijing, the administration has maintained cordial ties, in part because Big Business depends so heavily on China. But many Bush officials have an innate distrust, even loathing, of China, especially in the office of Vice President Cheney, who in 2001 drew several of his top aides from the staff of a strongly anti-China congressional committee pursuing allegations that Beijing had stolen state secrets during the Clinton administration. Cheney, too, is leading the charge for a more confrontational stance toward Russia. During an overseas visit in May that took him from the Baltic republic of Lithuania to Kazakhstan, in the heart of Central Asia’s oil and gas fields, Cheney delivered a series of broadsides against Moscow and warned Putin against using “oil and gas [as] tools of intimidation or blackmail.”

Flynt Leverett, who worked on Middle East policy for Bush’s National Security Council before resigning in disgust, told a political salon in Washington recently that the U.S.-Iran conflict could end up pushing Russia, China, and Iran closer together. “What I see as an emerging axis of oil between Russia and China will be greatly bolstered,” he said.




SERGEY LAVROV, Russia’s foreign minister, is Moscow’s point man for the U.N. talks about Iran. After a U.N. meeting in New York earlier this year, Lavrov said bluntly: “This looks like déjà vu.” Indeed, the parallels with the year before the invasion of Iraq are startling.

In addition to exaggerating the nuclear threat, the administration has been accusing Iran of harboring Al Qaeda fugitives and supporting bin Laden’s movement, though there is little or no evidence to support these claims. As in Iraq, Washington is sinking millions of dollars into propaganda efforts and alliances with dubious exile groups; according to a recent State Department planning document, the United States is busily setting up Iran intelligence and mobilization centers in Dubai, Istanbul, Frankfurt, London, and Azerbaijan to work with “Iranian expatriate communities.” Elizabeth Cheney, the daughter of the vice president and a top State Department official, is overseeing a program to spend $85 million on support for dissidents in Iran and to pay for anti-Iran propaganda. She has helped create a brand-new Office of Iranian Affairs at the State Department, and she reportedly supervises an office called the Iran-Syria Operations Group. As with Iraq, U.S. officials—realizing that U.N. support for an attack on Iran is nil—are talking openly about bypassing the world body and forging yet another “coalition of the willing” to confront Iran. And, of course, as with Iraq, there is the escalating rhetoric, the talk of “all options” being on the table, the news of Special Forces already operating in the country to foment civil conflict.