The official line in both Washington and Tehran is that there is no co-operation between the two states in the struggle against Isis across Syria and Iraq.  

At a summit in Paris last week on co-operation to fight Isis, US Secretary of State John Kerry suggested Iran’s involvement “wouldn’t be appropriate,” although he modified this stance a few days later.

Officially, the Iranians have been no less forthright. In a statement on his official website Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said: “Right from the start, the US asked through its ambassador in Iraq whether we could co-operate. I said no, because they have dirty hands.”   

However, the Supreme Leader, as the main decision-maker on foreign policy matters including negotiations with the US, has given 100 per cent backing to President Hassan Rouhani’s efforts to resolve hostilities with the US over Iran’s nuclear programme and bring an end to US sanctions.

The media in both the US and Iran are keen to portray the standard images of either side. The Iranian media insists that for the vast majority of Iranians, the US remains the “Great Satan.”  For the US public, Iran remains part of the “Axis of Evil,” as declared by President George Bush in 2001.

The reality however is that more complex factors are at play. The generally accepted position in relation to the Islamic State (Isis) in Iraq, for example, is that the Iran has no desire to see a militant Sunni jihadist state on its borders. While this is true, it is not, for the Iranians, the main consideration.

The lifting of Western sanctions and the stabilising of the relationship with the US has been a covert central objective of Iranian foreign policy since at least 2010.  Evidence has emerged that between then and the 2013 Iranian presidential elections, three high-level secret meetings took place between the US and Iran mediated by the government in Oman.  

It is as a result of these contacts and dialogue during the past 16 months that the US and Iran are able to communicate over the immediate issue of Isis.

In the current situation Iran’s co-operation with the West has gone as far as complicity in the removal of Nouri al-Maliki, a fellow Shia Muslim, as Iraqi prime minister.

For years Iran was the main backer of Maliki’s government and his Shia governing alliance.  Suddenly in mid-2014, with Iraq on the verge of unravelling, he fell out of favour with both the US and Iran. Maliki’s administration was deemed too sectarian. The exclusion of Sunnis and others from the government was seen as part of the reason for the success of Isis in northern Iraq.   

In a recent interview with CNN, Iraqi president Fuad Masum was asked whether it was a combination of US airstrikes, with Iraqi fighters and Iranian militiamen, that helped liberate the town of Amerli from Isis. He confirmed that it was.  

Video footage has emerged showing Iran’s top military commander Qassem Soleimani on the front lines of the battle against Isis alongside Iraqis trained and instructed by the US.

There are also reports that the Iranian airforce participated in a co-ordinated bombardment of Isis positions, along with US fighters, on the first day of air operations in Iraq.

It is clear that both the practical fact of co-operation and the mutual denials that it is happening suits both sides.  

The US can avoid the awkward issue of justifying to powerful lobbies in Washington that it is working with a country it condemns and continues to sanction. The West also gets to avoid angering its Sunni friends in the Gulf monarchies.   

For its part the Iranian regime, while saving face publicly by not being seen to be part of the Western camp, remains desperate to have sanctions lifted.  

The regime calculates that co-operation in Iraq will help pave the way for Iran to be seen as a stable force in the region and a state with which the West can do business.  

The fact is that the Iranian economy has become a hostage to US sanctions and the Iranian regime is prepared to bow to US bidding to get these removed.

The question is how far the US is prepared to push Iran to test its loyalty. The US plan for the future of Syria is a major test.

In the short term, once the border is crossed into Syria, the relationship between the US and Iran becomes more complex, with Tehran supporting the government of President Assad while the US continues to support the opposition insurgency.  

For their different reasons, even here, both are committed to defeating Isis. While practical co-operation may not be an option in Syria at present, the immediate objective in relation to Isis remains a common one.  

Whether this could widen out into some form of joint approach to the situation in Syria remains to be seen.

The immediate question of Syria aside, the ground has been laid for US-Iranian co-operation over a period pre-dating the election of Rouhani to the Iranian presidency in June 2013.  

It has been in the interests of both the US and Iran to build a rapprochement aimed at redefining their relationship and protecting the interests of both in the Middle East.

For more than a decade the US has been engaged in large-scale military invasions with the commitment of huge quantities of hardware and personnel to the Persian Gulf.  

However, there has been only limited success in stabilising the situation in favour of US control of the region’s markets and natural resources. The financial costs and the negative political fallout from massive US military operations have significantly negated their benefit while incurring astronomic costs.

Public opinion in the US and globally has turned against costly direct military interventions in distant countries. This is partly due to the effectiveness of global anti-war and peace movements in Europe and North America.  

Large-scale US military action has not produced the desired outcomes in line with the interests of US capitalism. If anything, Iran was the strategic winner of the Iraq disaster, becoming a major ally of Iraq’s new Shia-dominated regime.

Political developments in the region suggest that a reconfiguration of US politics in the Middle East is taking place. The desire to bring together a coalition of Gulf and Arab monarchies before airstrikes commenced in Syria, for example, was an indication of this change.

Part of this reconfiguration is aimed at the inclusion of “political Islam” into a new Middle East plan on the part of the US, with Iran’s theocratic regime being seriously considered as a key player.  

If successful, the new configuration in the Middle East will allow the US to influence and steer key regional developments in order to reinforce and perpetuate its global economic, political and military hegemony.  

There are also indications that the US and EU have reached some agreement about Iran playing a key part in securing stability in Afghanistan and Pakistan after the departure of the US, British and Nato troops from Afghanistan at the end of 2014.  

A major factor influencing this is undoubtedly the political clout wielded by the Iranian regime in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Afghanistan.  

In this context the co-operation of the US and Iranian forces to defeat the Isis insurgency does not look as far fetched as it at first appears.

<B><I>Jamshid Ahmadi is assistant general secretary of the Committee for the Defence of the Iranian People’s Rights (Codir). For further information contact codir_info@btinternet.com or visit www.codir.net.</I></B>