Mediaboss Marketing

Iran is tacitly supporting Iraqi officials' efforts to form a government in Baghdad that includes the country's three main ethnic and religious groups, according to Iraqi and Western diplomats, an encouraging sign for U.S. efforts to forge a regional coalition against Islamic State militants.

With strong influence in Baghdad, Tehran could have pushed the new prime minister, Haider Abadi, to install Shiite Muslim allies in key positions to maintain the same level of Shiite control imposed under his predecessor, Nouri Maliki.

Instead, Iranian officials stood aside as Abadi named some Sunni Arab Muslims and ethnic Kurds, as well as Shiite Muslims, to high posts in a government that will seek to mobilize against Sunni extremists who swept out of neighboring Syria last year and now control about one-third of Iraq.

"Iran recognizes that [Islamic State] is a threat to them, and that it's in their interest to have a unified government that can push back against the havoc," said Karwan Zebari, director of the Kurdish regional government's office in Washington.

Iran and the United States waged a bitter proxy conflict for control of Iraq after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, and many experts doubted they could work together against the Islamic State militants.

Yet the two governments have worked on parallel military tracks over the last month to help Kurdish and Iraqi security forces halt and, aided by scores of U.S. airstrikes, begin to roll back the militants' hold on territory and infrastructure across northern and western Iraq.

The State Department has acknowledged multiple high-level contacts between U.S. and Iranian diplomats as the threat has grown, including a meeting last week between senior U.S. and Iranian officials on the sidelines of negotiations over Iran's disputed nuclear program.

Secretary of State John F. Kerry flew to Baghdad early Wednesday for the first of several stops in the Middle East to try to build a coalition against the militants. He praised Abadi's efforts to form a broad-based government as "a milestone."

The White House this summer urged Maliki to resign and said the U.S. could not expand its military campaign against the militants unless a new government in Baghdad could operate as a partner in the fight. Iran's support for Abadi now makes that possible.

Hard-liners in Tehran at first resisted efforts to oust Maliki, who had marginalized the country's Sunni minority and ordered harsh security measures in Sunni communities. But others in Iran, including President Hassan Rouhani, concluded that Maliki's tactics had helped create Sunni support for the insurgents, and thus had worked against Iran's interests.

Continued here:
Iran backs Iraq's effort to form unity government, diplomats say