Reuters, Washington :Whether Washington likes it or not, Shi’ite Iran, a key ally of the governments of Iraq and Syria, is all but certain to be a major player in the fight against the Sunni militants of Islamic State.Bitterly at odds over most major Middle Eastern issues, the United States and Iran now essentially find themselves on the same side in an escalating crisis over the Islamist group that has seized large swathes of Iraq and Syria.While hardly anyone sees this as a case of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” an old proverb that resonates even today through the geopolitics of the region, a common foe could give Washington and Tehran rare common ground.Any effort to bring Iran and the United States closer will not be easy.Outright US-Iranian military cooperation against Islamic State appears to be off the table and Iran is also being frozen out of membership in the international coalition being assembled by President Barack Obama.Current and former US officials acknowledge that American and Iranian interests rarely coincide, so the challenge will be to make sure Iran’s role is as constructive as possible.”They will clearly be part of this,” said Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East adviser to Republican and Democratic administrations. “They have boots on the ground in ways that we don’t …. But there’s good reason for us to be wary.”Washington’s preferred dynamic, experts say, is for Tehran to work separately toward the goal of defeating Islamic State while the two countries seek to “deconflict” their activities, essentially to avoid stepping on each other’s toes.The United States cut off diplomatic ties with Tehran during a hostage crisis after the 1979 Islamic revolution, and the Obama administrationhas made curbing Iran’s disputed nuclear program a high priority.”Their irresponsible behavior reminds us that the enemy of our enemy may still remain our enemy,” the former head of the US military’s Central Command, retired General James Mattis, told a congressional hearing last week. “There may be ways that we can work in parallel. But I’d be very cautious and have very modest expectations.”Any material cooperation between the United States and Iran, for example in sharing intelligence about Islamic State movements, would have to be behind the scenes or done through intermediaries, experts say.The reason is that Washington’s Sunni Arab partners in the fight against Islamic State regard Iran with even more suspicion than US officials and see it as trying to deepen Shi’ite dominance in Iraq and extend its own influence in the region.
