The Iraqi government took the main initiative to encourage yesterday's talks in Baghdad between Iranian and United States representatives, in an effort to reduce the conflicts that are ripping its country apart. Iran and the US are fighting out, in part, a proxy war on Iraqi soil.
Since any agreement between them to scale it back would have an impact on the wider issues dividing Tehran and Washington, the indications that some progress was made yesterday are encouraging. But this is at best the start of a long process and both sides were careful not to raise expectations.
These direct talks at ambassadorial level were the first between the two sides since diplomatic relations were broken off by the US in 1980, after its embassy was occupied in the wake of the Iranian revolution. Hard-liners on both sides resisted holding them as pointless; but they have been overruled by pragmatists keen to explore what scope exists for political agreement on Iraq's future.
Iranian ambassador to Baghdad Hassan Kazemi-Qomi gave some cause for optimism by offering to help train the Iraqi army, set up a security committee with Iraq and the US and meet again within the next month. US ambassador Ryan Croker acknowledged this but said the promise of co-operation contradicts Iran's support for militias fighting Iraqi and US security forces.
Iran has been the major beneficiary of the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq, a fact the Bush administration has been very slow to recognise. It rejected advice from the Iraq Study Group last year to have a comprehensive political engagement with Iran. Yesterday's talks reflect a gradual victory of administration realists around secretary of state Condoleezza Rice and defence secretary Robert Gates over the hardliners led by vice-president Dick Cheney. They coincide with a congressional battle with the new Democratic majority over funding of the war effort and whether to lay down a timetable for US withdrawal from Iraq.
Whether this withdrawal comes before next year's presidential election remains to be seen. So does the much larger question of whether the confrontation over Iran's nuclear programme ends up with a unilateral US military strike. President Bush is the key figure here.
For the moment there is no direct political linkage between these questions. But both sides know that progress in the Iraq talks would affect the nuclear ones. This means there is noise from their mutual hardliners effectively opposing them. In particular, it will be difficult for the Iranian regime to sustain a united approach as the US military surge against Shia militias in Iraq peaks this summer. Iranian hardliners will have every motive to encourage resistance if they believe US policy is headed for military confrontation on the nuclear issue.
The security and humanitarian disaster in Iraq can only get worse if it is stoked up by further conflict between the US and Iran. Yesterday's talks could be the beginning of a productive political process if the will is there to find it.