Ahmadinejad in Baghdad

The article adds credence to the view

Yet in Tehran, DEBKAfile's Iranian sources report, the president's excursion into US-occupied territory was counted as a step forward in its seven-month old secret Saudi-mediated dialogue with Washington.

This dialogue has advanced in give-and-take steps on a broad set of issues.

that - as has been obvious for some time - the US and Iran started to develop some sort of accommodation around August of last year.

The most prominent is Iran's nuclear program. The third round of UN Security Council sanctions imposed Monday, March 3, banning trade with Iran did not really bother Tehran. The penalties were predicted and anticipated. Iran's rulers can live with a motion which they see as the Bush administration's parting shot in the dispute over the uranium enrichment issue. Not surprisingly Israel was not satisfied.

But mostly they are looking ahead to the next US president and their objective is clear: the cementing of the incumbent White House position on the North Korean nuclear weapons status as a convention which its next tenant will apply to Iran. This in rough terms means accepting a Tehran guarantee to freeze its uranium enrichment process, its nuclear bomb program and nuclear-capable ballistic missile project, without demanding their dismantlement.

This outline would be deemed in Tehran a positive basis for a nuclear deal with Washington.

Coming from an Israeli publication, there is, unsurprisingly, an assumption that there is a nuclear bomb program. My own view (based upon personal experience of the void between rhetoric and reality in Iran) is that if that is the case, it is not in fact deliverable in under 10 years at a minimum, and longer under a meaningful sanction regime.  

What does the Bush administration expect from Tehran?

According to our Washington sources, George W. Bush is keen to hand his successor a relatively stable Iraq where the violence spiral sustains its downward curve. The US president accordingly stopped direct US military action against pro-Iranian Shiite "special groups," in the expectation that Tehran will use its influence to keep Iraq on a relatively even keel for the remainder of his term in office.

The quid pro quo runs like this: Tehran is bidding for an understanding with Washington on its nuclear program, while the US is after Iran's help to preserve the status quo in Iraq.

Iran has two powerful resources for delivering the goods:

1. An extensive clandestine intelligence and military infrastructure across Iraq that will obey Tehran's orders to pull in its horns.
   
2. Tehran's hand on the spigot of the flow of weapons, money and extra-powerful roadside bombs to the different anti-US insurgent groups.
   

 

This seems to be the most objective bullshit -free assessment I have seen in a long time with a strong ring of truth.

And now to the nitty gritty: oil.

The third key issue dominating the US-Iranian dialogue is southern Iraq and its oil. This is also pivotal for Iran's bilateral relations with Iraq.

Ahmadinejad's hosts in Baghdad have to live with the realization that their guest has more clout with the Shiites of southern Iraq than the Maliki government.

Tehran's dominance of southern Iraq has three focii:
The shrine-cities of Karbala and Najef and the oil port of Basra. Iran and the radical Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr at the head of his Mehdi Army militia divide control of these three cities between them.

If the central government wants any say in southern Iraq, it must stay on good terms with both its rival masters.

Again, that seems a pretty credible assessment to me of the realities on the ground in Southern Iraq.

During his last visit to Tehran at the end of last year, prime minister al-Maliki signed an agreement to lay a pipeline taking Iraqi oil to Iranian refineries in Abadan.

This was a bid to link southern Iraq's oil to the Iranian oil fields and installations on the eastern bank of the Shatt al-Arb opposite Basra.

The Americans, who control and defend the southern oil fields, let the agreement go through, although they are in competition against Iran in Central Asia and Turkey. The Bush administration is reconciled to including southern Iraq and its oil fields in the overall package of Iraq understandings with Tehran.

Despite the "Iranian hegemony" propaganda, the US knows that Iran has never had any territorial ambitions (other than the odd maritime border dispute) over Iraq - merely a desire for security guarantees.

I would be interested to know exactly what form of goods and services will be provided to Iraq by Iran under the $1bn credit announced during the Baghdad visit. I would be surprised if oil equipment weren't part of it.

It's a long way from being over, but if August last year saw the End of the Beginning in Iraq, this visit by Ahmadinejad might be the Beginning of the End.

And is it the Saudi's wot done it?

That would be entirely consistent with my own experience with the Middle East Exchange (morphed to the infamous "Iran Oil Bourse") I initiated in mid 2001, which was apparently vetoed by the Saudi's, only for them to withdraw the veto a couple of years post 9/11 when the US/ Saudi relationship became more "arm's length".

The fact is that the Saudi's OPEC dominance means that the Iranians have always listened closely to what they have to say.