And Why Baghdad Anyway?

May 21, 2012

Most arms control negotiations take place in Geneva, Vienna, or other charming European capitals.  The agreement by all the parties to reconvene in Baghdad, the troubled capital of Iraq, was a curiosity.  When it reluctantly accepted Istanbul as the venue for the April talks, Iran argued that Turkey was not a neutral party, having recently agreed to reduce its oil imports from Iran as part of the international effort to pressure Iran on its nuclear activities.  Iran insisted that a country that did NOT participate in sanctions against it would be the proper balance to Turkey, and Iraq was quickly accepted.  Some may have calculated that Iran might be more inclined to be forthcoming if it was on friendly ground, with a host country that at some level understood its interests, if not its specific positions on the issues. 

Of course the close ties between Iran and Iraq more generally are a cause for concern to the other countries participating in the talks.  The political tensions inside Iraq, with the government of Nuri al-Maliki taking increasingly aggressive stands against its Sunni political opponents, are seen as strengthening the Shia agenda, which pulls Iraq, even symbolically, closer to Iran and makes the Arab world nervous.  Iraq's support for the government of Syria, while most Sunni Arab governments have joined the west in calling for the fall of Bashar al-Asad, is another current and acute point of friction between Iraq and many of its neighbors and partners. 

The United States, having invested blood and treasure to get rid of Saddam Hussein and replace his dictatorship with a more representative government, could not refuse Iraq despite its less than stellar reputation for security or democratic practice. The US still has a stake in demonstrating Iraq's reintegration into the region and the larger international community as a "normal" and law-abiding country. 

Iraq's recent coming-out party, hosting the Arab League summit in March, meant that its infrastructure for diplomatic gatherings was up to global standards, and hosting the nuclear talks is another sign of Iraq's ability to resume at least some of its earlier standing as a country of some stature and geopolitical weight in the region.  In fact, the nuclear issue itself is also appropriate for the new, post-Saddam Iraq, which has formally renounced any ambition to have nuclear weapons in its agreements with the UN and the United States.

Photo Credit: US Army, via Wikimedia Commons, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Barack_Obama_%26_Jalal_Talabani_in_Baghdad_4-7-09.JPG