Washington Calling … Tehran!

Since 2003, Washington and Iran have been jointly ruling Iraq, while in the autumn of 2001, Tehran’s allies in Afghanistan paved the way for the U.S. invasion.

It was tough realpolitik, whereas from Sunday evening, there is going to be a great public subversion. A senior Obama administration official announced that the U.S. would initiate U.S.-Iranian talks on the situation in Iraq.

With Shiite militia volunteers in Iraq and backed up by the Assad government in Syria, Tehran can corner ISIS better than anybody else, relieving Washington of any kind of involvement, and preventing not only Turkey, but also the Kurdish government in Erbil, from thinking of intervening.

Because of the Kurdish issue, Iran is in favor of the status quo in the region and has every interest in maintaining the unity and integrity of not only Iran, but also, ostensibly, Syria. That is clearly a key prerequisite for preventing conflict with the de facto independent Kurdish state in the north of Iraq and northeast Syria.

Questions were raised about what Ankara, immersed in electoral isolationism, will do. If it cuts off support to ISIS on the Turkish-Syrian border, it will deal a hard blow to Sunni fundamentalism.

Such a policy shift would be impossible, since it would be equivalent to Turkey not only renouncing any influence on Syria’s future whatsoever, but also on the Kurdish issue across the border.

These days Iran seems to have a broader common denominator of vital interests with the United States — from Afghanistan and Iraq to Syria, to the very moment when Erdogan’s foreign policy toward Egypt, the Arab-Israel conflict, Syria, Iraq, with a focus on the autonomous Kurdish entity in the north, do not merely constitute a regular hampering of interests but a great threat to the interests of the United States.

That being said, concurrently with Tehran’s impressive approach to the “great Satan,” Iranian diplomacy is keeping communication channels open for high-level talks, both with Riyadh and Ankara. In this great policy reversal, the Netanyahu government in Israel, isolationist and politically entrenched, is conspicuously absent.