Iran and the U.S. in Iraq: Different Interactions

Iran-US relations have experienced many important ideological conflicts and strategic rivalries during the last two decades. These rivalries particularly intensified in the Middle East region and sometimes led the two countries into the verge of direct military confrontation. However, the kind of Iran-US relations in Iraq shows a different pattern suggesting a tendency for discarding macro strategic rivalries and engaging into some implicit and indirect cooperation by the two sides. Contrary to the two existing views on Iran-US relations in Iraq namely, full-scale strategic interactions and cooperation and their complete rivalry and confrontation, this article argues that despite ideological conflicts and strategic rivalries between the I.R. Iran and the U.S. in the Middle East and their relative competition in Iraq, geopolitical constraints in this field and the existence of common threats facing both Tehran and Washington have led the two countries to a kind of implicit and indirect cooperation. As a result, emerging challenges and threats originated by Iraq's special geopolitical environment have overshadowed the strategic goals of Iran and the U.S. in Iraq and their rivalries paving the way for implicit cooperation between the two countries in this field.