Regional diplomacy potential

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As perhaps its central proposal, the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group Report recommended a major U.S. effort to enter discussions with the likes of Iran and Syria to discuss the ongoing mission in Iraq. This approach seemed weak or unpromising to many critics, however.

Predictably, the Bush administration rejected it, with the president declaring in his Jan. 10 speech that the United States would step up its military efforts to challenge Iran's meddling inside of Iraq. True to his word, Mr. Bush has since authorized raids against individual Iranians inside Iraq believed to be involved in stoking the conflict through the transfer of money, weapons or intelligence.

We agree with those who counsel against expecting big help from Iran or Syria. Iran in particular, under the leadership of the firebrand President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, seems unlikely to want to assist the United States in Iraq in any way. There was a time when some hoped we could recreate the spirit of U.S.-Iranian cooperation that prevailed after the overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Others suggested that by promising Iranian leaders we would not overthrow their regime, we could address Tehran's most pressing security concerns and elicit its cooperation.

Underlying all of this was the assumption Iran would not want major instability on its western border. But it now seems at least as likely that Iran is willing to accept some instability in Iraq as a worthwhile price for a historic defeat of the United States, reducing America's influence not only in Iraq but throughout the region.

All that said, a very sober and clear-eyed case remains for regional diplomacy, involving not only Iran, Iraq, Syria and the United States but Turkey, the Gulf states, Egypt, Jordan and the European Union and U.N.

This would not be diplomacy in the sense of trading favors with friendly states, all of which basically share common interests. Rather, it would be a savvier, realpolitik type of negotiation designed as much to pressure Iran as to ask for its help, as much to convey our resolve to remain a Persian Gulf power as to plead for assistance in dealing with the mess in Iraq.

To be specific, there are three main hard-headed reasons to convene an ongoing regional diplomatic process over Iraq, even if we should not expect breakthroughs as a result. First, such a process will allow the United States and its allies to disabuse Iran of any belief it can drive us out of the region through a defeat in Iraq. Second, it will at least marginally elicit greater help from some countries -- if not in terms of deploying troops to Iraq, then at least in terms of accepting refugees, providing economic aid, and so forth.

Third, and more subtlely, it will create a mechanism that might be useful in the future, when the environment is riper for a peace deal within Iraq -- or, heaven forbid, when the danger of Iraq's civil war mutating into a regional conflagration has grown.

As to conveying resolve, Tehran may believe that with its large population, the recent successes of its partners in places like Lebanon, its burgeoning nuclear capabilities and developments in Iraq, it is positioned to become the region's great power through combined charismatic appeal, economic weight and military might. To some extent it would become the champion of Muslims throughout the broader region; to some extent it would usher in what Vali Nasr calls the Shia Revival, at the expense of other states.

But most other Middle East countries are nervous about Iran. While hardly spoiling for a fight, they want to show resolve in the face of Iran's rise.