Tone on Iran role in Iraq softened

Not long ago, U.S. military officials in Iraq routinely displayed rockets, mortars and jagged chunks of metal to reporters and insisted that they were Iranian-made arms being fired at American bases. Collaboration between Tehran and Washington on stabilizing Iraq seemed doubtful at best.

In the last two months, though, there has been a shift in U.S. military and diplomatic attitudes toward Iran. Officials have backed away from sweeping accusations that the Iranian leadership is orchestrating massive smuggling of arms, agents and ammunition. Instead, they have agreed to a new round of talks with Iranian and Iraqi officials over security in Iraq. The meeting is expected to take place this month.

The U.S. also freed nine Iranian men last month, some of whom it had been holding since 2004. Iran denied U.S. accusations that many of them had been assisting anti-U.S. militias in Iraq, and had demanded their release in a series of testy exchanges with U.S. officials.

When the U.S. freed them, it did not allude to the Iranian demands. It said only that they no longer posed a threat.

Pentagon officials and analysts cite several reasons for the change, including U.S. concern that provoking Iran could set off a confrontation that military commanders are keen to avoid, and the realization that better relations with Iran would help stabilize Iraq.

“I do think that the military and civilian leadership in Washington has by and large come to the realization that it’s going to be impossible to stabilize Iraq without Iran’s positive contribution or cooperation,” said Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

Iraq also has served both Iran and the U.S. as a proxy battlefield for their dispute over Iran’s nuclear ambitions, and it may serve both sides now in tamping down the tensions.

Washington hard-liners have suggested that military force be used against Iran over its refusal to drop its nuclear enrichment program, and linking Iran to the violence in Iraq could bolster their case for military action. Analysts say the U.S. shift reflects the increased assertiveness of more moderate military and civilian forces concerned about a possible backlash from Iran at a time when the U.S. military is badly stretched. Meanwhile, analysts say Iran may be looking for ways to avoid more international sanctions against its nuclear program.

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Decline in attacks

Since October, when attacks on American forces in Iraq dropped dramatically over previous months, U.S. commanders have been acknowledging that Tehran appears to be keeping a promise made to Iraq’s government to control arms smuggling over the border. They are far from lavishing praise on the Iranian leadership, but their comments are a turnabout from the Iran-bashing of previous months.

The change has been echoed in the senior military leadership, particularly by the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Navy Adm. Michael G. Mullen, and the commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, Navy Adm. William J. Fallon.

Both four-star admirals have given interviews in recent weeks in which they downplayed suggestions that the United States was preparing to strike Iranian nuclear facilities. Their comments were noteworthy because they came at the same time the White House, particularly Vice President Dick Cheney, had been delivering bellicose warnings against Tehran.

In an interview Nov. 12 with the Financial Times, Fallon described such rhetoric as “not particularly helpful.”

Mullen has been more circumspect in public, but Pentagon officials familiar with his thinking say he is concerned about provoking extremist elements within the Iranian regime, which could make things worse in Iraq.

“You’re just expanding the violence in the region instead of controlling it, essentially opening another front in the war,” one military officer said, describing Mullen’s thinking.

The military still remains wary of Iran’s involvement in Iraq. Last Saturday, a military spokesman, Navy Rear Adm. Greg Smith, alleged that rogue militiamen backed by Iran were responsible for a market bombing in Baghdad a day earlier that killed as many as 15 people.

But Smith emphasized that he was not blaming Iran’s government for the market blast. Rather, he said that people arrested in connection with it were members of a cell historically backed by Iranian elements.

At a Baghdad briefing Nov. 15, U.S. Army Maj. Gen. James Simmons told reporters there was no recent evidence that the roadside bombs that caused most American deaths were still crossing Iran’s border.

“We believe that the initiatives and the commitments that the Iranians have made appear to be holding up,” he said.

The change followed a subtle altering in past months of U.S. attitudes toward another Iraqi figure with links to Iran, anti-U.S. Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr. American military leaders have given Sadr tacit praise for reining in his Mahdi Army militia since February, when an additional 28,500 U.S. forces began arriving in Iraq to try to quell the violence.

U.S. officials had long accused Sadr’s militia of enjoying Iranian support. Lately, they have said most Sadr loyalists are adhering to a cease-fire the cleric called in August and say only rogue elements operating out of Sadr’s control are causing problems.

Analysts say the changes are the most hopeful signs of improved U.S.-Iranian relations since the start of the Iraq war in March 2003 and reflect a realization in Washington that both Iran and Sadr are powerful presences here to stay.

Sadjadpour and others say the departure of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has helped alter attitudes in the Pentagon. A senior Pentagon official suggested that Rumsfeld’s replacement, Robert M. Gates, was seeking to moderate public rhetoric after concluding that a strike on Iranian nuclear sites could be counterproductive.

Gates has not publicly echoed the comments of Mullen and Fallon. But unlike Rumsfeld, who was frequently accused of muzzling senior military leaders, he has not rebuked them for their softer tone on Iran, a signal he is sympathetic to their stance.

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Akin to earlier tack

Gary Sick, an aide to President Carter during the 1979 Iranian revolution and U.S. hostage crisis, compared the turnaround to the U.S. military’s decision early this year to recruit former insurgents and their supporters into the Iraqi security forces, rather than try to eliminate them. The campaign is credited with greatly reducing violence in many parts of the country.

“The bottom line is, saying these people are enemies and we have to kill them is not a solution to our problems,” said Sick, now a researcher at Columbia University.

There also is the possibility that the standoff over Iran’s nuclear enrichment program has had the unintended result of forcing the two sides to deal more civilly with each other.

Tehran denies the U.S. allegations that it has meddled in Iraq and says such accusations are designed to build support for an American strike on its nuclear enrichment facilities.

Despite Iran’s public show of defiance, though, Sick said he believed it had been badly jolted by two sanctions resolutions passed this year by the U.N. Security Council over the nuclear issue. The United States is pushing for a third resolution.

“They found those very troublesome and want to avoid another round,” Sick said of the sanctions, which have affected Iranian officials’ assets, freedom to travel and the country’s ability to obtain technology and funds for its nuclear program. “It could . . . mean that they are interested in working out a more reasonable relationship with the United States in Iraq.”

At the same time, the United States has to accept that Russia and China will keep trying to block further sanctions, said Sadjadpour. That has reminded Washington that Iran is a force to be reckoned with, either on nuclear or Iraqi issues, he said.

Both agreed that Iran wanted to bolster its image in Iraq and the region to heighten its influence not just among Shiites, but among all Muslims. It could start by convincing the United States it is not sowing trouble in Iraq.

Whether Washington will ever be convinced is impossible to say, they said, but there are hints it is more open to persuasion than before.

“I’m very, very cautiously optimistic,” Sick said. “I think we’ve all been wrong enough times, but there are some interesting, tantalizing signs that maybe something is going on that could lead to change.”

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tina.susman@latimes.com

Times staff writer Peter Spiegel contributed to this report.