US should engage Iran to defeat Islamic State

Al-Monitor wrote last week, prior to the twin attacks by Islamic State (IS) terrorists in Tehran on June 7, that the first “four terrorist incidents since the Riyadh summit provide further evidence of the hollowness of the charge that Iran is at the core of the threat from those terrorist groups that most threaten the United States, its allies and so many innocents.”

The attacks in Tehran should, finally and urgently, force a rethinking of the reasoning that linked Iran, IS and al-Qaeda, not only because no such link exists, and not only because Iran is helping Syria and Iraq battle these groups, but because the costs for the United States and its allies and interests have been high, and are likely to get higher. In the warped minds of IS operatives, who are on a murder spree since US President Donald Trump’s visit to Riyadh, summit and post-summit messaging may have been interpreted as a kind of signal for a new phase in the sectarian war. Hitting Iran, in this score, can buy you a pass.

It has not escaped our notice that targets of IS and al-Qaeda terrorists since May 21 have been the United Kingdom (a “Western” country), a predominantly Shiite district in Baghdad, a predominantly Shiite city (Tehran) and Egyptian Coptic Christians.