Rare agreement

摘要

AMERICA and Iran are not always at loggerheads. As the two dominant powers in Iraq since America's invasion in 2003 they have repeatedly aligned their policies to keep the country together. They agreed, for example, that Haider al-Abadi should emerge as prime minister from the jumble of coalitions produced by the election of 2014. They have shared the goal of crushing the so-called Islamic State (is), indirectly co-ordinating ground and air campaigns against it. And they both want Iraq to be preserved as a unitary state. That is why, on September 12th, General Qassem Suleimani, the head of the Quds Force, Iran's foreign legion, Douglas Silliman, the American ambassador to Iraq, and Brett McGurk, Donald Trump's envoy to the coalition against is, were all in Sulaymaniyah urging Kurdish leaders to defer the referendum on independence they have scheduled for September 25th.