The US and Iran are discussing what to do to curb the ISIS advance in Iraq and how to bring stability to this stricken country. The talks are informal and they are at official rather than leader level. But they are happening and that fact alone is the most significant diplomatic development in the this whole theater of conflict and tension in the middle east since 9\/11 for sure, and maybe for decades.<\/p>\n
What these two countries now recognize, one a superpower, the other the only Islamic democracy which functions as a stable nation, is that they have a common interest in halting the rise of Islamic extremism as an organised military power grouping, with the potential to cause murder and\u00a0mayhem on an industrial scale and redraw maps to create a new medieval state. This moves the US closer not only to Iran, which is a very good thing indeed, but also the war aims in Syria of Assad. This is also a good thing but few in the West will\u00a0dare admit it even if they pluck up the courage to think it. The Sunni royal autocracies in the Gulf will be unsettled, even alarmed. In \u00a0Jerusalem (or\u00a0Tel Aviv) lights will burn late.<\/p>\n
There is another aspect. The foreign policies of Washington and Moscow, which have differed somewhat over the middle east, are now drawing much closer together. If the West, Iran and Russia find a common position and press it, it may well be that the Jihadist surge will have reached its high water mark. This may be wishful thinking. We shall have to wait and see. In the end the solution will be political not military, and may involve some kind of federated separation between\u00a0Shia, Sunni and Kurd in the countries presently organised as the\u00a0single entities of\u00a0Syria and Iraq.<\/p>\n