Can Iran and Syria Help?

The New York Sun's Youssef Ibrahim says no.

The Baker report is what every American policy-maker, Republican or Democrat, is lusting after, as if it contained the Ten Commandments on what to do in Iraq.

Drafted by the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan commission of policy elders — chaired jointly by the Bush family consiglière and former secretary of state, James Baker, and a veteran Democratic lawmaker, Lee Hamilton — the report contains not a silver bullet but a poisonous one: a suggestion to engage Iran and Iraq in talks, ending a long boycott of the two terrorist states.

It is about as disingenuous a solution to the problem as the flawed reasoning that led us into the war in the first place.

Is there anyone in the American diplomatic establishment who can convincingly point to one shred of logic — except fear — that would induce either country to respect Iraq's independence or integrity?

Syria's assassinations, corruption, and constant manipulation of Lebanon over the past three decades are now part of the historical record. Iran's own record of sponsoring terror groups and mayhem, as well as its current effort to acquire nuclear weapons, is equally dismal. In fact, the two states are hovering over Iraq's borders like hyenas waiting for a feast.

The other, equally ineffectual suggestion in the Baker findings is to convene a regional conference of Arabs, Persians, and Turks to discuss the situation in Iraq.

As a veteran of many such conferences — starting with the ill-fated 1990 Madrid peace conference, with the same Mr. Baker presiding, to the Oslo accords that brought Yasser Arafat and Israel's Likud government together — I can vouch that they lead nowhere, as we can plainly see in the Palestinian Arab territories 16 years later.