Arab world welcomes Iraq Study Group report

Iran's power to help could be limited. "Iran has an interest in stabilizing Iraq, but its influence has been exaggerated," says foreign policy analyst Davoud Hermidas Barvand. "It cannot even direct the political situation there among the Shiites."

The price of Iranian assistance is not yet clear. Analysts say it might seek a softer line over its nuclear program, an end to sanctions, and a guarantee against military strikes. It has proved a hard negotiator on the nuclear issue and the Baker recommendations have increased confidence in Iranian government circles.

One demand has already been articulated. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who makes the final decisions in foreign policy, said US troops must pull out of Iraq before Iran would help reduce the violence: "The occupation of Iraq is not a morsel that the US can swallow," Mr. Khamenei said during a visit by Iraq's president in late November. "The first step to resolve the instability in Iraq is the withdrawal of occupiers from this country and the transfer of security responsibilities to the popular Iraqi government."

The ISG calls for a negotiated settlement with Syria to stop shipping weapons to Hizbullah, the Shiite militant group, and stop allowing Iran to transport weapons across the country to Hizbullah in Lebanon. It calls for Syria's full cooperation in investigating all political assassinations in Lebanon, and to encourage Hamas to recognize Israel's right to exist.

In exchange, the ISG recommends that Israel return the Golan Heights to Syria, with an international force on the border that could include US troops, if both countries agree.

"Sure, Iran and Syria may be allowing people to come across their border and providing some arms or money, but the conflict is overwhelmingly about sectarian enmity inside Iraq,'' says Andrew Garfield, a former British military intelligence officer who spent most of last year as an adviser in Iraq and is now a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Washington.

Mr. Garfield says peacemaking will have to done inside Iraq, by Iraqis, and that he doubts any outside power has much influence there anymore.

He's also skeptical about the ISG's calls for more trainers embedded with Iraqi units. He argues the US military simply doesn't have enough trainers with the cultural sophistication to get the job done. At any rate, he says, the Iraqi Army would have to be dramatically expanded just to take up the role of the US and other coalition forces on the ground now.

"You'd have to replace the roughly 160,000 coalition forces with new Iraqi forces, and in reality that probably isn't enough either,'' he says. "Realistically, Iraq probably needs 300,000 to 400,000 more troops, and they'd have to be as good or better than the American troops they replace."

• A stringer in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.

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