(Reuters) - The No. 2 U.S. diplomat will travel to Vienna this week to take part in talks over Iran's nuclear program, the State Department said on Sunday.

In a statement, the State Department said Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns would be among the U.S. officials taking part in the latest round of nuclear talks, which include six world powers and Iran and are scheduled for Monday to Friday.

The participation of Burns, who led secret U.S.-Iranian negotiations that helped bring about a Nov. 24 interim nuclear agreement between Iran and the major powers, could signal that the United States is intensifying efforts to break a logjam in the nuclear talks.

Iran, the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China set a July 20 deadline to reach a comprehensive agreement in an interim deal they reached in Geneva last November.

http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/06/15/usa-iran-nuclear-idINL2N0OW0IC20140615

This is not related to the situation in Syria and Iraq. All Americans have repeatedly said that the talks were just related to getting an agreement on the nuclear issue. This was said as various forces against the negotiations wanted them to deal with a whole basket of issues - including Hezbollah and Syria, where they have troops.

It is true that as they have - even a narrow diplomatic opening, the hope would be that it could lead to more normal relations.

Just like Russia is willing to be our enemy du jour in Ukraine while being our buddy elsewhere. That's been working great so far. This sort of fatuous thinking is what got us into these messes.

sheee. The total mindlessness of it is like being smothered by a marshmallow.

And these jihadis will never stop until somebody stops them, and guess whom is best placed and motivated to do that job? Iran, that's who. And lets face it, our anti-Iran policy has not worked worth a damn. I know, I know, they took our embassy and embarassed the hell out of us a whiile back, but that was ages ago.

So yeah, I think we do care, at least we don't want them taking cities and doing mass killings. If they stay out in the bushes and just make raids, we probably would not care much.

would quit arming and giving aid and comfort to these terrorist bastards. But that's too much to ask "Friends of Syria", I knnow.

Sure, the idea behind "Friends of Syria" attacking Syria was to undermine Iran, etc. as is obvious to everyone, but that's no excuse for it. And the "war on terror" propaganda *is* getting somewhat tacky.

Thanks for the thread, bemildred.

You treat them like they treat you, and always stay open to improvement. If you are going to babble on about how nations don't have friends and enemies, they have interests, then act like it.

World View: Extremists have a grip on the country as Sunni Muslims decide that the jihadists are preferable to persecution by the official Iraqi army


Even the fanatics of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis) are astonished at the extent of their own victory in taking control over Iraq's second city, Mosul, in the past week. "Enemies and supporters alike are flabbergasted," said Isis spokesman Abu Mohammed al-Adnani. It is difficult to think of any examples in history when security forces almost a million strong, including 14 army divisions, have crumbled so immediately after attacks from an enemy force that has been estimated at between 3,000 and 5,000 strong.

It is a rout without precedent. I have written frequently in the past in this newspaper that the Iraqi security forces were a corrupt patronage machine that exploited and persecuted the local population. It was significant that for the first six months of this year, Isis secured its grip on Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad, without any sustained effort by the army to dislodge them other than indiscriminate bombing and shelling of the city.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/iraq-crisis-west-must-take-up-tehrans-offer-to-block-an-isis-victory-9537866.html

The United States is considering US air strikes to help the Iraqi government fend off an Islamist insurgency as well as possible discussions with neighboring Iran, US secretary of state John Kerry said on Monday.

Asked about the possibility of such strikes, Kerry said in an interview with Yahoo! News: "They're not the whole answer, but they may well be one of the options that are important."

"When you have people murdering, assassinating in these mass massacres, you have to stop that. And you do what you need to do if you need to try to stop it from the air or otherwise," he added.

Kerry also said the United States was "open to discussions" with Iran to help Iraq's Shi'ite-led government combat a Sunni Islamist insurgency.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/open-to-us-iran-cooperation-on-iraq-drone-strikes-an-option-kerry/article1-1230111.aspx

Not an answer.

Vienna (AFP) - Washington said Monday it might use a critical fifth round of nuclear talks between Iran and world powers to discuss with Tehran possible cooperation tackling a Sunni insurgency in Iraq.

The United States and Iran, who have been bitter foes for over 30 years, are both deeply concerned by a major insurgency by Sunni militants who have overrun swathes of Iraq over the past week.

A senior US administration official said that as a result "there may be some conversations" with Iranian negotiators on the sidelines of nuclear talks between Iran and six world powers in Vienna on Monday.

Present in Vienna were US Deputy Secretary of State William Burns, who last year held secret nuclear talks with Iran in 2013, and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.

https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/world/a/24251005/

Australia's elite SAS soldiers are ready to swoop into Baghdad to rescue diplomats if the bloody fighting in Iraq's north reaches the capital, Fairfax Media has been told.

It is also understood Australia could fly surveillance plane missions as part of a broader US-led effort to beat back the jihadist forces that have established bases in the Iraqi city of Mosul and north-eastern Syria, though Washington had made no request as of Monday night.

Fairfax Media understands the SAS would be deployed only if security in Baghdad deteriorated to the extent that staff could not be removed safely without the protection of the special forces. But the SAS has been used this way before, notably to evacuate diplomats from East Timor in 1999.

The Sunni militants of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) continued their advances in the country's north-west, taking the city of Tal Afar and circulating notices calling on police, soldiers and other ''non-believers'' to report to mosques and repent, setting up computer lists of men expected to express remorse for their actions under the imminent threat of violence or death.

http://www.watoday.com.au/world/sas-set-to-rescue-baghdad-diplomats-20140616-3a8nj.html

"A state has neither friends nor enemies. A state has interests.'

It would be very nice to see some grownups show up, I've not been sure if there were any left.

FATHA, Iraq — An uneasy calm prevails on the front lines about 60 kilometres north of Tikrit, where Iraqi officials acknowledged Monday that Sunni extremists had murdered between 700 and 1,700 captured Iraqi Shiite soldiers on the weekend, as the ultra-fundamentalist rebels had boasted on Sunday.

Several days of violent clashes between Kurdish peshmerga troops and Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) insurgents petered out Saturday at this dusty spot between the Lower Zab River and a bridge on the Kirkuk-Tikrit highway. However, with only a couple of hundred metres separating the peshmerga and ISIL fighters dug in behind the bridge, fighting could break out again at any moment.

After touring a long defensive sand berm that his troops were using bulldozers to reinforce, the peshmerga commander at the front, Brig.-Gen. Sherko Shwany, told a small group of reporters who were the first to reach his position that five districts within the oil-rich governorate of Kirkuk were now under rebel control, but not the city of Kirkuk, which has a Kurdish majority along with substantial numbers of Sunni and Shiite Arabs, Turkomans and Assyrians.

“Over the past few days they tried to attack the wall, but they couldn’t get over it and they escaped,” the general said. “We will not let anyone pass the wall of protection that we have built here. If any force tries to cross this line, we will fight them.”

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/world/Kurdish+troops+fight+death+with+Sunni+extremists/9944296/story.html

The world woke up last week to discover a crisis in Iraq. It’s an opportunity to pay it some attention, but it’s also an invitation to repeat serious mistakes.

The most urgent response is to resist the most urgent response the extremists want from us. The gunmen of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL, have published pictures of themselves committing atrocities. Specifically, after capturing hundreds of Iraqi army soldiers and disarming them, they have filmed themselves murdering their prisoners.

Now why would a group of militants promote pictures of themselves committing war crimes or crimes against humanity? Because they are terrorists. Let’s remind ourselves: terrorists are people who use terror as a political tactic. They want to shock, horrify and terrorise their audiences. So let’s resist the urge to react as they want us to. Let’s assert rationality over reflex.

The West needs to repress another, related reflex, too: the urge to bomb anything that looks like a problem. The world still looks to US leadership. But it needs US judgment more than it needs US JDAMs. “Why is bombing the only option in Washington’s policy tool kit?” poses a headline in the US journal Foreign Policy.

http://www.smh.com.au/comment/four-lessons-we-need-to-heed-in-iraq-20140616-zs9q6.html