South Asia Center Nonresident Senior Fellow Barbara Slavin writes for Al Jazeera America on why US-Iran tacit cooperation over the situation in Iraq would be beneficial to the nuclear negotiatons process:
Shock at the onslaught by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) — gobbling up Sunni areas of Iraq and slaughtering Iraqi Shiites — has pushed the United States and Iran to consider a tacit alliance reminiscent of their efforts more than a decade ago in ousting the Taliban in Afghanistan.
The crisis has once again put Washington and Tehran on the same side, opposing Sunni sectarian extremists who hate both Americans and Shia Muslims. But the enemy of an enemy is not necessarily a friend, and Washington faces a tricky challenge in working with Tehran to contain ISIL and preserve what’s left of the Iraqi state while avoiding being drawn onto a widening regional sectarian battleground on which some key U.S. allies are ranged against Iran.