(Corrects spelling of Saleem al-Jubouri in paragraph 19)

By Claudia Parsons

BAGHDAD, Nov 24 (Reuters) - Iraq's president flies to Tehran this weekend to seek help halting a descent into civil war but analysts say it may be too late and that in any case there is only so much Iraq's neighbours can do -- even if they want to.

Jalal Talabani's trip comes after a landmark visit to Iraq by Syria's foreign minister, and as U.S. President George W. Bush, facing anger over Iraq at home, is under pressure from his allies to enlist the help of his arch enemies, Iran and Syria.

Mustafa Alani, Iraqi security analyst at the Gulf Research Center in Dubai, said Talabani's trip smacked of desperation.

"They've reached the point they are so desperate now they've lost control over the situation inside the country," Alani said.

Car bombs killed over 200 people in a Shi'ite stronghold in Baghdad on Thursday in the worst attack since U.S. troops ousted Saddam Hussein in 2003. Analysts likened it to the February bombing of a Shi'ite shrine in Samarra in its potential to fan the flames of hatred between Shi'ite and Sunni Arabs.

The attack capped a week of tension within the U.S.-backed government of Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who meets Bush next week in Jordan.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad invited Syria's president to Tehran as well, though he is not expected when Talabani is there.

"Ahmadinejad is sending a very clear signal to Washington ... that both Iran and Syria are part of the solution and they won't be ignored," said Toby Dodge, Iraq political expert at Queen Mary, University of London.

Dodge said it was "Fantasy Land" to think Bush would bring himself to ask for Syrian and Iranian help. He was in any case in a weak bargaining position, with both Syria and Iran taking advantage of their leverage in Iraq to push their own agendas.

"Syria is destabilising Lebanon and Iran is going for nuclear proliferation and (they're) doing so because they believe they can escape the wrath of America because of Iraq."

Washington accuses Syria of allowing foreign fighters to come in over its border, while non-Arab, Shi'ite Iran is charged mainly with backing Shi'ite militias and exporting arms.

A senior U.S. official said recently Iran was not sure who would emerge on top, "so basically they fund everybody." But he added: "Nobody in this country stays bought. You're rented."

EASIER TO DESTABILISE THAN STABILISE

Iran denies nuclear arms ambitions and rejects suggestions it is meddling in Iraq. And while it may indeed be able to destabilise Iraq, its ability to do the opposite is less clear.

Though it maintains influence over Shi'ite leaders who operated in exile from Tehran for decades, many of Iraq's Arab Shi'ite citizens are suspicious of Iran's Persian culture and millions fought against Iran in the war of the 1980s.

"There's a huge exaggeration about what Iran can do," Alani said. "The Iranians are fueling this sort of exaggeration because they want to inflate their value."

The Mehdi Army, for example, a militia nominally loyal to young Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, seemed not even entirely under Sadr's control any more, and more interested in its own domestic agenda than in doing Iran's bidding, he added.

Political analyst Mashaallah Shamsolvaezin in Tehran echoed that view. "I think there has been some exaggeration about Damascus and Tehran's capabilities," Shamsolvaezin said.

Sunni Arabs moreover, both in Iraq and elsewhere, are deeply suspicious of Iran, fearing Tehran is in the ascendency in the region at their expense.

"I personally think there is a powerful Iranian hand in Iraq and it sometimes appears as if Iran and the United States are settling scores on our land," said Saleem al-Jubouri, spokesman for the main party representing Iraq's Sunni minority.

"We have to be careful in negotiations with them," Jubouri said. "We should be sending the message: 'Stop interfering.'"

Alani said Syria's potential positive influence was even less than Iran's and all it could do was tighten border control and stop allowing insurgents to use Damascus as a safe haven.

Dodge said such a deal, in exchange for U.S. guarantees it will not seek regime change in Syria, was the kind of "realpolitik" that could emerge from the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan panel preparing proposals to Bush on Iraq.

"Iran is different," he said. As long as America believes Iran is developing nuclear weapons a deal is all but impossible.

Talabani's hope, then, will be to convince Iran to deal directly with Baghdad. "He'll say 'Please decouple us from America and give us a fighting chance to save this country, because if it does go down the pan it will wash across your borders,'" Dodge said.

A senior Iranian security official blamed the U.S. invasion for the chaos and said it was time for Washington to hand power to Iraqis. "It does not mean that America should be deleted from the picture, what I mean is that America's role and influence in Iraq should be reviewed." (additional reporting by Parisa Hafezi in Tehran)

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