US-Iran naval contacts would be useful: US admiral

AFP: Contacts between the American and Iranian naval fleets would be useful once the Islamic Republic stopped backing violence in Iraq, the top US naval commander in the Middle East said in an interview published Wednesday.

LONDON (AFP) — Contacts between the American and Iranian naval fleets would be useful once the Islamic Republic stopped backing violence in Iraq, the top US naval commander in the Middle East said in an interview published Wednesday.

Speaking to the Financial Times in Washington, Vice Admiral Kevin Cosgriff said the United States and the Soviet Union had benefitted from naval contacts in the Cold War.

Asked whether the United States and Iran would benefit from such contacts, Cosgriff replied: "I think they would."

He noted, however, that the United States could not have a "normal relationship" with Iran while the latter sponsored attacks on US forces in neighbouring Iraq.

Cosgriff said negotiations for a 1972 agreement between the United States and Soviet Union "created an opportunity for the two navies to talk … And then that led to other things — visits and those sorts of things."

He said that he worried about both the United States and Iran making miscalculations about the other, but dismissed talk of an American attack on Iran this year as "urban legend".