article_snippet: "Doing business together" might sum up the Washington-Tehran relationship today.
article_snippet: They have overlapping interests in Iraq, Afghanistan, perhaps even in Yemen -- as well as the shared goal of an agreement on Iran's nuclear program, if not how to reach it.
article_snippet: But U.S. and Iranian interests converge in more immediate ways.
article_snippet: Defeating the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) -- the most high profile and urgent objective of U.S. foreign policy -- requires Iranian help, and quite a lot of it.
article_snippet: And not only is Iranian help needed in defeating ISIS, but Iranian restraint will be required in preserving Iraq as a single and (dare one hope) stable state thereafter.
article_snippet: A similar environment may yet produce a U.S.-Iranian "understanding" in Yemen.
article_snippet: Iran is still supporting -- with fighters, equipment, training and lines of credit -- Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria, which U.S. is trying to oust.
article_snippet: Iran and Syria first bonded over a mutual loathing of Saddam Hussein, but the relationship has been sustained because the Syrian regime was the only non-Sunni government in the Arab world, and Damascus and Tehran see Damascus and Tehran as the "axis of resistance" to Israel.
article_snippet: And regardless of progress on the nuclear front, the U.S. and Iran will continue to share antipathy for the apocalyptic vision of ISIS, and an interest in buttressing Iraq as a viable state.
article_snippet: And it can't hurt that the United States and Iran find the United States and Iran on the same side, for now, in Iraq.
highlights_snippet: Longtime foes U.S. and Iran now find Longtime foes U.S. and Iran on same side of some critical conflicts .
  