Iran wielded its influence in intra-Shiite fighting in Iraq last week, but Washington shows no sign it can or will engage Tehran in a complex long-term political solution for Iraq, they argue.

A key test will come when the top US military and civilian leaders in Baghdad, General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, testify to Congress in Washington next week about the next steps in Iraq.

"There is a pragmatic strategic interest on the part of the US in engaging with the Iranians because they are an inevitable part of both the problem and the solution in Iraq," analyst Suzanne Maloney told AFP.

"But I can't predict that that's exactly how it's going to play out in the hearings next week," said Maloney, an Iran expert who helped shape Iraq policy at the US State Department until May last year.

She doubted it was "politically palatable" for lawmakers in an election year to suggest "talking to a government that has denied the Holocaust, threatened to eradicate Israel," and challenged US interests and values abroad.

Senator Joseph Biden, who will chair the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings, was concerned Tuesday about Iran's role in the latest events but did not mention it by name when he recommended a new approach.

The Democratic lawmaker doubted President George W. Bush's claim that the crackdown by the US-backed government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on Shiite militiamen marked a "defining moment" in Iraq's history.

When reporters asked whether the United States or Iran was the ultimate winner, he cited media reports that Iran brokered the ceasefire between forces led by Maliki, a Shiite, and Moqtada al-Sadr's anti-American Mahdi Army.

"If that's true, I'm not sure how the president views that as such a defining moment," Biden said.

He also wondered whether the administration had a plan for stabilizing Iraq over the next four years and what it will do with the 30,000 extra troops sent as part of a surge Bush announced 15 months ago.

He recalled that when they testified here last September, Petraeus and Crocker said the surge would "start to wind down this spring," when they would recommend a future course of action to the president.

"And the first (question) is, what has the surge accomplished? And the second is, where do we go from here?" Biden asked.

And he stressed a new approach.

"I just think that we need a diplomatic surge, we need to engage major -- other major powers, Iraq's neighbors and the UN in the search for a solution which this administration has utterly neglected," Biden said.

In December 2006, the Iraq Study Group, a high-profile bipartisan panel, recommended, among other things, that the United States engage Iran and Syria in a solution for Iraq and withdraw most US combat troops by early 2008.

The Bush administration ignored these recommendations.

Analysts like Rohan Gunaratna from the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore say Iran is pivotal to a solution.

"Although the president of Iran (Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) appears very irresponsible..., I believe it's so important for the United States to speak to Iran," Gunaratna told AFP by telephone.

He said Iran is not only key to settling intra-Shiite rivalries as it had influence with all Shiite groups, including those backing Maliki, but was needed to bridge the broader divide among Shiia, Sunni Arabs and Kurds.

Analysts and politicians alike lament that the Iraqi leadership has failed to do more to promote reconciliation during the reduction in violence partly linked to the troop surge.

Although the United States has had intermittent low-level talks with Iran, it missed a chance to fully engage with Tehran when its supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei made an unprecedented call for talks in 2006, Maloney said.

The United States at the time was focused on rallying the international community into isolating Iran over its disputed nuclear program, she said.

Maloney, an analyst with the Brookings Institution, suspects Iran will now just wait for the next US administration to consider any move toward real dialogue.

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