You are sending a link to...
Iran Halts Talks With U.S. On Iraq
They suspend talks with us. Can anyone explain why it was wise to open ourselves up to this kind of humiliation by holding talks with the mullahs in the first place?
BAGHDAD — As American strikes on Shiite fighters in Baghdad have widened, Iran has suspended talks with the United States on Iraqi security, with the Iranian Foreign Ministry on Monday citing the continued offensive as the reason.
The State Department did not comment directly on the talks, but a spokesman, Tom Casey, said, “The fact remains, though, that the Iranian government continues, despite their public statements of support for the Iraqi government, to play this negative role, to provide this kind of assistance to militant groups and to militia groups.”
“It’s something we want to see stopped, and it’s something the Iraqis want to see stopped,” Mr. Casey said.
The suspension of talks by Iran is hard to read. It comes on the heels of a disclosure by the American military that among the evidence it has collected of intervention by Iran is documentation of training camps near Tehran run by Lebanese Hezbollah militants. That information was given to an Iraqi delegation to present to Iranian officials last week. But Iranian politics is a game of shadows with so many crosscutting interests that it is hard to say what Iran’s goal may be.
Hezbollah is no longer described in the press as a terrorist organization, but is now routinely described as a militant Lebanese group.
Two things are clear. The talks have not borne much fruit, so suspending them is almost cost free, at least in the short term. The downside is that the talks have been a way for the two countries, which do not have diplomatic relations, to have face-to-face conversations. Several Iraqi politicians said they believed that the Iranian suspension was as much in retaliation for the United States’ criticism of Iran’s nuclear program as it was for Iraq policy.
“Some Iranian officials believe that Iraq is a better location to pressure the Americans over Iran’s diplomatic crisis with them,” Ali al-Dabbagh, an Iraqi government spokesman, told Al Hurra, a satellite channel, on Monday evening...
