In an apparent U.S. gesture to Iran, five Iranian diplomats held by the U.S. military in Iraq were handed over to Iraqi authorities July 9 and will be released to the Iranian Embassy in Baghdad within days. While what the United States expects to get in return for the release remains unclear, instability in Iran along with political pressure piling at home and abroad for the U.S. administration means the offer might not be enough to jump-start U.S.-Iranian negotiations.

Analysis

The U.S. military handed over custody of five Iranian diplomats to Iraqi authorities July 9. The Iraqi authorities will release the Iranian detainees within days to the Iranian Embassy in Baghdad, according to an Iranian Embassy spokesperson.

U.S. forces detained the five Iranian diplomats in the northern Iraqi city of Arbil in January 2007. The five allegedly were linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Quds Force, and were providing direct support to Shiite militias in Iraq. The high-profile detention took place against a backdrop of tit-for-tat abductions in a heated intelligence war between the United States and Iran as Washington and Tehran each sought the upper hand in behind-the-scenes negotiations over Iraq.

In early November 2007, the U.S. military announced that it would release nine Iranians detained in Iraq, including two of the five Iranian diplomats detained in January. At that time, STRATFOR noted that this was likely a U.S. gesture to kick-start negotiations with Iran. The move came as Russia had just made a very public display of its cooperation with Iran to influence Moscow’s own negotiations with Washington. The deal over the U.S. offer fell through somewhere along the way, however, and it took roughly 20 months longer before the United States released the five diplomats.

The Iraqi authorities are downplaying the release. They are attributing it to the Iraqi-U.S. bilateral security arrangement that requires the U.S. military to release or transfer detainees in U.S.-run prisons to Iraqi-run prisons, leaving it up to the Iraqis to decide the prisoners’ fate. Since the beginning of 2009, U.S. forces have been steadily releasing detainees to Iraqi authorities, but the Iranian detainees are a special case. The captured Iranian diplomats were a bargaining chip for the United States to use in its tumultuous negotiations with Iran — one that Washington now appears willing to cash in.

U.S. President Barack Obama has made clear since he sought the U.S. presidency that he intends to pursue a dialogue with the Iranians to reach a resolution on issues ranging from the Iranian nuclear program to Iranian influence in Iraq to Iranian support for Hezbollah. That diplomatic track, however, took a turn for the worse in the Iranian postelection fallout that led a number of U.S. policymakers on both sides of the political spectrum to unite in opposition to the president’s plan of talking to what they view as a repressive Iranian regime run by an illegitimate president. Seeing the domestic pressure piling on Obama, Israel also took the opportunity to pressure the Americans into taking a more hard-line stance against Tehran.

Future U.S. strategy toward Iran remains murky. Following the postelection crisis, Washington decided to reassess U.S. intelligence and policy toward Iran, but it is unclear whether that review will result in harsher action toward the Iranian regime. Most rumors have centered on the idea of imposing more stringent sanctions on Iran, but without Russia’s cooperation, any sanctions plan will remain toothless. The release of the Iranian detainees is part of a larger security agreement between Iraq and the United States, but this is not a routine release. It could indicate that the U.S. administration still intends to forge ahead in dealing diplomatically with the Iranians in spite of the political constraints piling at home and abroad.

It is unlikely that the United States would have made this move without getting something from Iran in return, but whether such a reciprocal move has taken place yet remains unclear. Even if the United States is attempting to lay the groundwork for more fruitful negotiations with Tehran, the Iranians themselves are in the midst of an internal power struggle that is much more likely to deter Iran from negotiations than propel it toward serious talks. While the United States has taken a significant step toward lightening the mood with Tehran, it may not be enough to lift the negotiations from their current morass.

This article is published at Lebanonwire by agreement with www.stratfor.com, the world's leading private intelligence provider.

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