BIran, US divide stands in Iraq's way by Kaveh L Afrasiabi

There are, however, serious side effects to Iran's Iraq policy in tandem with the US approach, given the second George W Bush administration's stubborn resistance to acknowledging any positive role played by Iran in regional crises, depicting Iran instead as a "rogue" power that, in the words of Kenneth Pollack in his new book, Persian Puzzle, aims to overthrow its neighbors. Such caricatures of Iran's regional foreign policy are not helpful and the Bush administration must sooner or later reckon with the fact that Iran is a major regional player with a sophisticated, multilayered foreign policy, featuring certain shared or parallel interests with the US.