Stage set for US to discuss Iraq with Iran at nuclear talks

The stage is set for talks between the US and Iran over the threat extremists now pose to the future of neighboring Iraq.

Early stage discussions between the two countries could take place on Wednesday in Vienna, on the sidelines of nuclear talks.

US Secretary of State John Kerry, in a fresh indication of American concern about the Iraqi crisis, says airstrikes are also possible in a bid to halt atrocities allegedly perpetrated by ISIS militants.

Our Washington Correspondent Simon Marks reports.

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In a sure sign of the urgency with which the US views the situation in Iraq, John Kerry publicly voiced what was once unthinkable.

He told Yahoo News interviewer Katie Couric that, yes, the US will be willing to talk about Iraq with Iran….despite the enmity that has existed between Washington and Tehran since the revolution swept the mullahs to power.

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Those talks…albeit larded with caveats…could begin later this week in Vienna.

The US and Iran have delegations there discussing the country's nuclear aspirations.

For months, the Obama administration has insisted it would ONLY discuss nuclear matters with Iran…nothing else on the bilateral agenda was going to be allowed to cloud the talks.

The Secretary of State's comments certainly appear to have taken the Pentagon by surprise.

There, Rear Admiral John Kirby told reporters the Defence Department has no intention of working with Tehran.

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But at the White House, a spokesman said working with the Iranians in Iraq may prove to make sense.

And the former British Ambassador to the UN, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, agrees.

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For now, the news from Iraq only gets grimmer for the Obama administration, and threatens to derail the President's foreign policy legacy of being the man who ended the war there.

US officials push back against the notion that they should have a left residual force in Iraq when troops pulled out at the end of 2011.

But they don't deny that the crisis there today is creating strange geopolitical bedfellows.