No not quite that way, they wouldn't have. But there are advantages there that don't exist elsewhere. To begin with, about 2/3 of Iranian population supports the US war. So there were no internal issues that Iran would need to settle. Nor does the Iranian government particularly need to justify everything to the people. They could not have allowed major bases for invasion. BUT, they could easily have overlooked an air-corridor, they could have promised search and rescue missions in case of mishaps (as they did with Afghanistan), they could have allowed a limited landing of forces and equipment (without acknowledging it), and they could have used their substantial influence in Najaf and southern Iraq to help, etc, etc.
None of this is far fetched if you think about it. Here you have a country that hates Iraq. Whose local population is the only one in the region that held a candle vigil for 9/11 victims (i.e. despite what many may think, they are not anti-American). And there exists a political faction that wants to start good relations with America. So what is it that gets in the way? Mistrust between the governments. And if that mistrust had been reduced, then why wouldn't it have happened as I described?
I just finished a long debate about the damage that the axis of evil remark did. My point, it damaged the reformists and gave the hardliners the upper hand. The other side's, the comment was not as important. So now we hear UK's Foreign Sec. Cook on the topic and what does he say?
Of Bush's Axis of Evil speech, when he named Iraq, Iran and North Korea as the enemies of the free world, Cook says, archly, that 'whoever wrote it' was ignorant of the realities.
'The immediate effect of the speech was to achieve a major reverse for the reformers in Iran,' he said, pointing out that the ayatollahs used the speech to attack America and democratic forces at home. 'If we are going to have a multilateral system we've all got to have ownership of what the priorities are going to be.'
I think I can read the Persian Gulf affairs pretty well. And I think that having Iran's support against Iraq would have been better than anything that UN and EU could have offered.
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