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Arab officials and commentators appeared content that Washington and Tehran had finally started talking, but expressed concern Tuesday that the budding dialogue could cut them out of the loop over the future of Iraq, one of the region’s most important countries. Many of the Iraq Sunni Muslim-dominated neighbors fret that the U.S.-Iran dialogue would further boost Iran’s influence over Iraq’s majority Shiites.

“Iraq should not be stripped out of its Arab identity, especially as Iraq is one of the outstanding members and founder of the Arab League,” Ahmed ben Heli, the Arab League’s undersecretary general told reporters in Cairo Tuesday. The League’s chief, Amr Moussa said the group had always “called for U.S.-Iranian dialogue” and called the Baghdad talks a “reassuring and a positive step toward diplomatic dialogue instead of the military confrontations.” But the United States and Iran are “not the only sides … concerned with the situation in Iraq,” Moussa added. “Developments in Iraq should not be conducted away from the Arabs’ interests. As neighboring countries, we have interests because Iraq is part of the Arab League.” Suspicion over American and Iranian intentions in Iraq was running high in Arab capitals, a day after U.S. and Iranian ambassadors discussed the seemingly unstoppable sectarian violence that has engulfed Iraq four years after the U.S.-led invasion. The four-hour meeting in Baghdad on Monday broke a 27-year diplomatic freeze. The session, according to both sides, did not veer into other difficult issues that encumber the U.S.-Iranian relationship — primarily Iran’s nuclear program and the more than a quarter-century history of diplomatic estrangement. The Americans said there was broad policy agreement but that Iran must stop arming and financing militants who are attacking U.S. and Iraqi forces. Abdulaziz Sager, the director of Dubai-based Gulf Research Center, said Iran was deftly exploiting Iraq’s chaos by using its talks with the Americans for its own ends, which differ with those of Iraq’s neighbors. “We don’t want Iraq to become an Iranian satellite,” Sager said. Gulf states fear being dominated by a resurgent Iran — and one which may be armed with nuclear weapons in a few years. Sager said there were concerns because Monday’s talks had skirted the issue of Iran’s disputed nuclear program. One Gulf government official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press, said his country — just across the Persian Gulf from Iran — was busy calculating how its security situation could change by a nuclear-armed Iran that stands to be allied with Iraq. The Associated Press