The foreign ministers of the two nations met and publically agreed that all nations have a right to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, but stopped short of saying the same for WMDs. This is of course very much at odds with the position of the United States. Interesting.

/boggle @ Sisyphus

The new Iraqi government is trying to find common ground with Iran as part of their ongoing effort to stop Iran's support of the insurgency. This is just politics.

 

Kinda like when the government of Afghanistan condemns American attacks on the Taliban in rural areas. There's a certain "wink wink nod nod" aspect to it.

Well sure, but it's still revealing. Iraq, for one thing, is afraid (with good reason) of its neighbors. If the U.S. left tomorrow, then there would almost certainly be a full ethnic civil war, and neighboring powers might well get involved. Iran supporting Shiite, Saudi Arabia supporting Sunni, and maybe even Turkey suppressing Kurds. Even unified (which they aren't), they are far weaker than any of their neghbors. So there will be a real need for appeasement for a long time.

 

Second, it just highlights the fact that there is no reason to expect that a democratically elected government will do what we want for any other reason than that we have our military in their country. They are smack in the middle of the Islamic world, after all, and I think its safe to assume that popular sympathies will be alligned against "bullying" nations like ourselves...

I'd say that's a pretty good assessment. They're doing the best they can, and the political climate of the world right now is such that they probably couldn't show a lot of gratitude towards the US even if they did feel it.