President Barack Obama's Central Intelligence Agency director said in an interview over the weekend that the leader of an elite Iran military force is contributing to instability in the neighboring Iraq it purports to assist and is complicating the overall United States mission against terrorism in the region.
This is the same Iran with which the president is desperate to conclude a nuclear agreement by the end of the month, believing somehow such an agreement would burnish his legacy.
Whether it comes to complicating U.S. anti-terrorism efforts in the region or negotiating to maintain its burgeoning nuclear capabilities, Iran is still Iran. Though the names have changed, the same anti-U.S. regime that captured American hostages in 1979 and held them prisoner for nearly a year and a half is still in charge.
Although Iran and the U.S. are ostensibly on the same side when it comes to wanting to rid the region of the Islamic State insurgents, CIA Director John Brennan said he "wouldn't consider Iran an ally right now inside Iraq."
In the same interview, the director spouted his boss's assertion that the Iraqis and not the pullout of American troops was responsible for the country's insecurity, but an Obama meeting this week with the president of Afghanistan that is expected to conclude in a slower pace of U.S. troop withdrawals indicates Obama may have learned something.
Many experts now conclude that keeping a contingent of U.S. troops in Iraq might have helped to prevent the spread of the Islamic State, but the 2011 negotiations toward such an end eventually broke down. Obama wanted just 2,000-3,000 troops, while the Iraq prime minister wanted many thousands more. Without saying so, the president may have seen the error of his ways.