Iran says it now supports U.S.-Iraq deal

U.S. officials were skeptical of Iran’s supposed change of heart.

McClatchy Newspapers

BAGHDAD — Iran on Monday softened its resistance to a pact that calls for withdrawing American forces from Iraq by the end of 2011, a shift that could make it easier for Iraq’s ruling Shiite Muslim government to secure parliamentary approval. U.S. officials said they doubted that Tehran had altered its stance, however.

Reports from Iran’s state news agency called an Iraqi Cabinet vote that advanced the security compact a “victory for the ruling party and its Kurdish partners,” referring to the Shiite lawmakers who supported the agreement.

The Web site of Iran’s state television quoted Iranian judiciary chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi as saying, “We hope the outcome of [the deal] will be in favor of Islam and Iraqi sovereignty, security and stability in the region.

“We hope that the American forces will withdraw completely from Iraq within the schedule limited for them.”

Those reports marked a change in tone from Iran’s take on Iraqi negotiations with the U.S. earlier this year, when Iran had leaned on Shiite lawmakers to block the deal.

Shahroudi is a case in point. In October, he was quoted on Iranian television as saying, “The pact will never serve the interests of the Iraqi government and nation.”

Shiite parties, led by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, carried the withdrawal agreement through the Cabinet on Sunday, winning 27 of 28 votes among the ministers who attended Sunday’s session.

American officials were skeptical that Iran had changed its stand on the pact.

“There has been no relenting whatsoever in the Iranian position,” a senior U.S. government official said in Baghdad. “They are dead set against the success of this agreement.”

The American official, who couldn’t be identified under the rules of the U.S. Embassy briefing, speculated that Iran recognized Shiite support for the deal and chose to adjust its strategy.

Iraqi and American leaders touted the compact at a ceremony Monday at which U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari signed two agreements, one defining the terms of the American withdrawal and another laying out relations between the countries on a slate of nonsecurity issues such as trade and technology.

“This is something that would be the ambition of any country in the world, to have such distinguished relations with the United States,” Zebari said.

The agreements are contingent on approval from Iraq’s parliament, where a Sunni Muslim political bloc is split on the security plan, and lawmakers linked to anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr oppose it. Parliament received the agreement Monday, and is scheduled to begin debating it this week.