Should the U.S. Stay in Iraq or Go?

Nov. 29, 2006 — -- For anyone trying to understand what is going on in Iraq there was an interesting meeting in next door Iran today.

Iran's supreme religious leader, Ali Khamenei, met his neighbor, Iraqi President Talabani. It was a historic and overtly friendly get-together between two nations who had once been bitter enemies and fought a long war in the 1980s in which more than a million people died, making it one of the bloodiest conflicts of the 20th century.

As Iraq faces descent into another bloody conflict, the United States is contemplating talks with Iran and Syria as part of what may eventually be an exit strategy. How will these two countries -- both of them long-time adversaries of the United States -- react and what do they want ?

Talabani's visit to Tehran this week is in effect the first major rapprochement between the two nations since the fall of Saddam Hussein. After the meeting, Ayatollah Khamenei pledged support for Iraq. He also blamed the United States for all the chaos there and said the answer to ending the violence was the immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces.

The imminent threat of civil war in Iraq concerns its near neighbors, Iran and Syria, now as much as ever, and just as much it does the United States.

As President Bush travels towards a key meeting this week in Jordan with beleaguered Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki, Iraq's neighbors are plotting their moves as they watch to see what the United States will do.

While Iran is very clear it now wants the United States leave the region and there is a real desire in the United States to find a way out of Iraq, long- or short-term, but preferably short. The United States is also now certain it should not allow Iran to increase its control over Iraq and -- just as importantly -- over Iraq's potentially huge oil reserves.

It's a big dilemma for the United States. If the Iraqi government collapses, not only is all-out civil war in Iraq a massive failure for U.S. government policies and efforts in the region, it potentially also hands power and influence over Iraq to a radical Iranian regime that the Bush administration has labeled an enemy and a force for evil in the world.