PARIS -
It took a hail of bullets into the car of Iranian envoy
Khalil Naimi in Baghdad on Thursday to jeopardize
Tehran's attempts to become an influential mediator in
Iraq, with the strong hope of seeing itself removed from
George W Bush's "axis of evil".
Press and cultural attache Naimi died
instantly when the car in which he was traveling
near the Iranian embassy was raked by three heavily-armed
men.
Against all odds, Iran had embarked on
an unlikely diplomatic mission to get the American
"Satan" out of its difficulties in Iraq. A five-man
Iranian foreign ministry delegation, headed by the
ministry's director for Persian Gulf affairs, Hossein
Sadeqi, is in Najaf to assist in the crisis over the
rebel leadership of cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose
Shi'ite followers have been engaged in week-long battles
with US-led occupation forces.
Muqtada, whom
US forces have vowed to "kill or capture", is
barricaded inside Najaf, Iraq's holiest city. The US has
massed more than 2,000 troops for an offensive, though both
sides have said that they want to avoid bloodshed.
Now, though, Iran finds itself as yet
another victim of the spiral of violence in Iraq that has
seen citizens of a host of countries - ranging from Italy
to Japan - either killed or kidnapped over the past
weeks, and its official involvement in the country
becomes problematical. It was not immediately clear whether
the assassination had any direct impact on Sadeqi's
plans in Iraq, although the envoy ruled out holding any
talks with Muqtada after earlier hinting that this might
be a possibility.
And the chairman of the US
Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers, on an
unannounced visit to Baghdad, said that the last thing
Iraq needed was "influence from neighboring countries
trying to promote or protect their own self interest".
Sunni Muslims in Iraq, who for many years under
Saddam Hussein and even before dominated the corridors
of power, are known to be extremely fearful of Shi'ites
- who form the majority in the country - becoming the
new rulers. And they constantly warn in newspapers and
at mosques of Iran interfering in Iraq and attempting to
stir sectarian trouble.
In their first reaction,
authorities in Tehran vehemently condemned the murder of
Naimi, blaming it indirectly on the American presence in
Iraq. But diplomats did not rule out a possible
connection between the killing and the mediation efforts
undertaken by Tehran to assess the chances of calming
down Muqtada, the young and volatile cleric who has
plunged American forces and their allies into their
fiercest battles since their triumphant entry into
Baghdad a year ago.
This was the first time that
an Iranian diplomat had been assassinated in Iraq, where
Iran, with its strong Shi'ite ties to the Shi'ite
majority in Iraq, would think itself "immune" to such
attacks.
"Those who killed our diplomat are the
same that do not want to see Iraq living in peace and
stand up on its feet," one Iranian diplomat in Baghdad
said, while in Tehran, Hamid Reza Asefi, the Iraqi-born
official spokesman of the foreign affairs ministry
squarely accused the Americans, saying: "The violence
and bloodshed in Iraq are the direct result of
American's foolish policies in the region, making the
whole world an unsafe place for humanity."
Officials in Washington confirmed that Britain
had invited the Iranian delegation to help restore calm
and security in Iraq, as, in the words of Mehdi
Karroobi, the speaker of the majlis, or parliament, "it
is obvious that Iran has strong influence in Iraq, where
the people have traditional brotherly bonds with the
Iranians".
An aide to Muqtada told French news
agency Agence France Presse that the cleric welcomed the
Iranian initiative because it came from an Islamic
country. He said Muqtada was ready to meet the Iranian
diplomats.
A senior State Department official
said in Washington of the Iranian mediation: "They were
invited by the British trying to put an end to the
bloody standoff between American-led coalition forces
with the Mahdi Army of Mr al-Sadr," explaining, however,
that although the US went along with the British
initiative, the proposal did not come from the Bush
administration.
Iranian foreign affairs minister
Kamal Kharrazi said in Tehran hours after the delegation
left for Iraq that "naturally, there are such requests
from the US and Britain that we help improve the
situation in Iraq, and we are making efforts in this
regard. There has been a lot of correspondence with the
US about Iraq and the Swiss embassy in Tehran, which
represents US diplomatic interests in the Islamic
republic, played a mediating role in the recent
exchanges," Kharrazi added, accusing at the same time
the US of breaking its promises in Iraq and "taking a
wrong path".
"When the Americans, or their
most close and trusted ally, the British, call on Iran
to help, this shows the influence Iran exercises in
Iraq and the region, something that is not to the liking
of many Arab nations and their proxies in Iraq hating
the Iranians," one Iraqi diplomat told Asia Times
Online.
Jean Pierre Perrin, chief of the foreign
desk at the leftist French paper Liberation and a former
correspondent of the French news agency AFP in Tehran,
commented: "Iran's main adversary is not Washington but
the two traditional enemies of the Iranian political
Shi'ism: the exacerbated Arabian nationalism that
carried to Iran the hardest strokes under Saddam Hussein
and the imported Islam Wahhabite of Saudi Arabia that
always sees in Shi'ism a 'plot of the Jewish on the one
hand and the other groups that are currently engaged
against the Americans in the Sunnite regions of Iraq'."
Tehran's attempts to help the US out of its
troubles in Iraq (even if for self-serving reasons) have
not dulled the rhetoric coming out of Tehran. Ayatollah
Ali Khamenei, leader of Iran, told the country's
state-run, conservative-controlled television: "The
United States accuses other countries of intervening in
Iraq and of inciting the Iraqis, but it is very clear
that the crimes of the occupation and their insulting
behavior with regard to the young and the women are at
the origin of the reaction of the Iraqis, Shi'ite or
Sunni."
For the Supreme Leader, it is obvious
that "sooner or later, the Americans will be forced to
leave Iraq in shame and humiliation".
The
assassination happened just hours before Sadeqi and his
delegation were to leave for Najaf, from where Muqtada
had earlier announced that he would obey the supreme
religious authorities, and if necessary give himself up
to an independent Iraqi court and dismantle his army,
transforming it into a political party.
Michael
Rubin, who recently resigned as an "advisor" to the
US-installed Iraqi Governing Council, wrote: "The
British government, with tacit US approval, has
initiated discussions with the Iranian foreign ministry.
A team led by top Iranian diplomat Hossein Sadeqi
visited Iraq in recent days, but his talks went nowhere.
The Iranian regime used Washington and London's outreach
not to promote dialogue, but to humiliate the United
States at a time our soldiers make sacrifices to
preserve Iraq's freedom."
Leaking news of the
talks on Iranian television, foreign minister Kharrazi
demonstrated to his domestic audience that the US was
not in control and had run to Iran for assistance.
Moving in for the propaganda kill, Kharrazi stated: "The
solution is for the occupiers to leave Iraq."
And Iran's repeated offer for a meeting of
Iraq's neighbors to "advise" the Americans who "ignore
both the situation in Iraq and the psychology of the
Iraqi people", helping them "not to repeat and cumulate
mistakes" there.
But at the same time, though the
Iranian leaders call on Iraqis to give a lesson to the
"wounded American monster", they are nevertheless worried
of impending chaos in Iraq, and have avoided any direct
praise for the Sunnite opposition in Fallujah, and
even for Muqtada's revolt.
So while the Arab
press in general glorifies Muqtada, describing him as a
"hero", a "popular figure" fighting the occupation of
Iraq by foreign forces, etc, the Iranian media are more
cautious, observing that the young cleric is "a noise",
without any religious or political legitimacy.
The Iranian daily Aftab Yazd said that the media
were "wrongly" presenting the activities of Muqtada and
his followers as the widespread resistance of the Iraqi
people. "It is quite erroneous for our media to give
implicit or open backing to people like Sadr, whose
causes are not entirely known to us," it said, adding
that "clearly no friend of liberty would defend the
occupation in Iraq, but it is one thing to oppose
occupation and another to take sides in a fight where
none of the potential winners are favorably inclined
toward Iran".
Columnist Ali Hamade said in the
an-Nahar of Beirut, referring to the handling of Muqtada
and his Mahdi Army, "The United States administration
has made a major blunder in Iraq by thinking it could
follow Israel's heavy-handed example against the
Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza without having to
pay the political price."
"The Americans are on
their way to doom in Iraq. In addition, the US failure
in Iraq will have drastic implications on US plans for
the region ... Iraq has shown that it was one thing to
bring down an unpopular regime in an Arab state, but
quite another to be able to rule that state. Iraq has
shown that ruling post-war Iraq was the closest thing to
hell for the Americans," Hamade said.
Columnist
Rafik Khoury wrote in al-Anwar, another Lebanese
Arabic-language daily: "Muqtada al-Sadr, the young
Shi'ite militia leader, has shown that the Americans did
not come to introduce democracy, but to rule Iraq and
lay their hands on its vast oil resources. Washington,
which came to Iraq under the pretext of liberating its
people from the previous regime of Saddam Hussein, has
now saddled them with a more repressive authority," he
said, adding: "Meanwhile, Sadr has become the symbol of
anti-American Iraqi armed resistance, and Fallujah has
become the symbol of Iraqi cities being oppressed by
allied force."
Commented the London-based
al-Qods al-Arabi. "It was impossible for the United
States to succeed in wiping out Shi'ite cleric Muqtada
al-Sadr's Mahdi Army because it is not an organized
group, but a popular movement that expresses a religious
ideology."
The paper said that US forces
represented the largest power in the world, one that
could defeat the Iraqi army and "perhaps the entire Arab
armies united in a few days, because of the military
disparities, but the US army is unable to defeat the
ideas and religious ideologies in a country like Iraq".
According to this paper, capturing and killing
Muqtada, as promised by the Americans, would "make him a
martyr, while if he is arrested alive, he will become a
symbol of resistance, just like Nelson Mandela or the
late Sheikh Ahmed Yassin", the founder and spiritual
leader of the Palestinian Islamic resistance movement
Hamas. However, that if the US forces fail to arrest
Muqtada, it will constitute "a blow to US credibility".
Meanwhile, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
reports that US officials have repeatedly accused Iran
of trying to meddle in Iraq's internal affairs. Iran has
rejected the accusations.
On April 12, the head
of US forces in the Gulf region, General John Abizaid,
said that Iran and Syria had been involved in what he
called "unhelpful actions" in Iraq. But he acknowledged
that there are elements in Iran who are trying to limit
the influence of Muqtada.
Iranian officials have
distanced themselves from the cleric. On April 10,
Iranian President Mohammad Khatami indirectly criticized
the insurgency led by Muqtada. He said Iran "considers
any policy that would intensify the crisis in Iraq and
jeopardize the establishment of security to be harmful
for Shi'ite and Islam".
Gary Sick is a professor
of Middle East politics at New York's Columbia
University and was a top White House aide for Iran
during the 1979 Islamic Revolution and ensuing hostage
crisis. Sick said that, despite US criticism of Tehran,
Washington has been relying on Iran's assistance in
Iraq.
"There have always been two strains to US
policy. Just as Iran often seems to follow policies
where the one part of the government seems to differ
from what the other part of the government is doing, we
see the same thing in the United States very much. We
have, from the beginning, in fact, relied on Iran and
its assistance, especially in the south and its
relations with the Shi'ite, to maintain peace and order
and to lend support to a more moderate perspective in
Iraqi politics. At the same time, almost without stop,
we have been criticizing Iran's activities in Iraq,"
Sick said.
Sick said the US had been maintaining
indirect contacts with Iran through British officials
and also through members of the Iraqi Governing Council,
some of whom have made several official trips to Tehran.
"If you really want to work out cooperation on
the ground, you have to do it in person. It's very
difficult to send a letter and say, 'Why don't you do
such-and-such', and the other side comes back and says,
'Why don't you do such-and-such'. You really need to sit
down and talk to each other to do that," Sick said.
Sick said Tehran's role in Iraq cannot be
ignored, given Tehran's influence among Iraq's Shi'ite
and its past experiences with Baghdad. "If Iran wishes
to cooperate with the United States, it's going to be
helpful. If Iran decides to openly oppose the United
States, that is going to be very unhelpful from the US
point of view and could, in fact, be disastrous. So it
seems to me that developing a working relationship - it
doesn't mean that the countries have to reestablish
diplomatic relations, it doesn't mean that they have to
express love for each other - it basically means working
together on issues that are of mutual significance. What
happens in Iraq is tremendously important to Iran, and
it's tremendously important to the United States," Sick
said.
Iran and the United States cut diplomatic
ties following the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis. Since
then, the two countries have communicated through the
Swiss embassy in Tehran, which represents US interests
in Iran. Diplomats from the two sides have reportedly
held talks in Geneva over the situations in Afghanistan
and Iraq.
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