After 13 years of criticism, Washington now needs to work with Iran to prevent disaster in Iraq

This week has seen the surprising news that Iranian and U.S. officials have held talks over the conflict between the government in Iraq and the Sunni insurgents of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Christian Emery writes that these talks are a measure of the seismic changes that have occurred in Washington and the Middle East since George W. Bush labelled Iran a part of the ‘Axis of Evil’ in 2002. He argues that the two countries now share some fundamental interests in the Iraq conflict, and that they will need to cooperate with one another to some degree in order to preserve the state-system in the region.