PARIS - Already clouded, relations
between Iran and neighboring Iraq have darkened further in the
past week with the kidnapping of an Iranian
diplomat and arrest of intelligence officers, and renewed
charges by Iraqi officials that the Islamic Republic is
interfering in Iraq's internal affairs.
On
Monday, Hazem Sha'lan, the Iraqi Defense Minister, again
described Iran as Iraq's "number one" enemy and accused Tehran
of sending weapons to followers of Muqtada al-Sadr, the
rebel Shi'ite cleric fighting US-led forces in Iraq, with
the flashpoint being the holy city of Najaf. Sha'lan accused
Iran of "clear interference in Iraq", including taking over
some Iraqi border posts and sending in spies and
saboteurs.
Earlier, the Iraqi Interior Ministry
announced the arrest of four Iranian intelligence
officers, saying they had been detained in Baghdad on
suspicion of spying and carrying out acts of sabotage in
the country.
Fighting between the defiant
Muqtada, who many sources in both Baghdad and Tehran
insist is backed by Iran's ruling ayatollahs
against US forces and Iraqi police, broke out seven days
ago in Najaf, Diwaniyaah and Baghdad, leaving more than
400 people dead and wounded, most of them from Muqtada's
Mehdi Army.
On Thursday, US marines, backed by
aircraft, battled militia dug in at a cemetery in Najaf,
a day after the military said it would launch an
offensive to end the rebellion once and for all.
In response, an official of the Mehdi Army,
Sheik Asaad al-Basri, has warned that militiamen will
blow up pipelines in the south if US forces try to storm
their Najaf bases - a statement that has sent the price
of oil on global markets to record highs of more than
US$45 a barrel.
Most of Muqtada's militia and
the cleric himself are dug in around Najaf's ancient
Shi'ite cemetery and the adjoining Imam Ali Shrine.
Storming such holy symbols could touch off a widespread
reaction among Iraq's majority Shi'ite community.
Meanwhile in Baghdad, fighters from the
Mehdi Army now appear almost entirely in control of the vast
slum of Sadr City, a predominantly Shi'ite neighborhood
of 2 million people. Formerly named Saddam City, it was
renamed for Muqtada's father, a senior Shi'ite cleric
killed by suspected agents of Saddam Hussein in 1999.
Dozens of junior clerics in the slum have gained
popularity by restoring services and security after
Saddam's fall.
Angered by Sha'lan's accusations,
Iran on Sunday summoned Iraq's charge d'affaires in
Tehran to substantiate claims of Iranian involvement in
Iraq. "Today we summoned the Iraqi charge d'affaires to
ask him to give us proof," foreign affairs senior
spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said, adding that Iraqi
officials should also "stop creating a bad atmosphere"
between Iran and Iraq.
Iran has yet to recognize
the Iraqi interim government formally, put in place by
the United States on June 28 pending elections in
January, and which has been described by Iranian supreme
leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as "lackeys" of the
Americans.
Sha'lan told the Arabic television
station al-Arabiyah that Iranian-made weapons had been
found on Mehdi Army fighters, and warned Muqtada's men
to put down their arms or face "extinction".
Adnan al-Zurufi, the governor of Najaf, backed
Sha'lan's accusations, claiming that 80 men fighting US
forces in Najaf had been found to be Iranian. "There is
Iranian support for [Muqtada] al-Sadr's group, and this
is no secret," he said.
In response, Muqtada has
said he will fight US and British invaders to his "last
drop of blood", and Iran has denied allegations that it
is arming militia groups in Najaf. "I will continue
fighting," the cleric told reporters in Najaf. "I will
remain in Najaf city until the last drop of my blood has
been spilled. Resistance will continue and increase day
by day," he said. "Our demand is for the American
occupation to get out of Iraq. We want an independent,
democratic, free country."
For his part, Iranian
Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani said Sha'lan is a
political amateur with little experience and that he
lacks the minimum qualifications for knowing the truth.
"The weapons [Sha'lan] claims are made in Iran have in
fact been in Iraq since the [Iran-Iraq] war [of
1980-88]. Similarly, one can find many Iraqi arms in
Iran," the minister explained in an interview with an
Arabic television station.
In an interview with
the Kuwaiti daily newspaper al-Anba, Sha'lan - whom the
Iranian press and lawmakers describe as a "petty CIA [US
Central Intelligence Agency] informer" - also urged Iran
to send back 130 Iraqi planes, 30 of them Boeing
passenger aircraft and the rest jet fighters and bombers
- most of them Russian-made, but also some French-made
Mirages. This is in reference to the thorny problem of
the planes Saddam sent to Iran to save them from
destruction during the first Gulf War in 1991.
Tehran insists that only 22 military planes were
sent to Iran, with some of them badly damaged in
landing. But it says it is ready to return them if asked
by the United Nations. "We will discuss these issues
with the coming elected government officials, and not
with the interim government," an obviously angry Asefi
added.
Relations between the two countries have
also been complicated by the kidnapping of Fereydoun
Jahani, an Iranian diplomat due to open a consulate in
the holy city of Karbala, by a group calling itself the
Islamic Army in Iraq. According to the group as quoted
by an Arabic television station, Jahani is an officer in
the Iranian Revolutionary Guards' intelligence detained
for "stirring sectarian strife and for activities
outside his diplomatic duties".
Iranian
officials have confirmed that Jahani "disappeared" on
Wednesday, and explained that they had withheld the news
of the kidnapping in the hope of having him freed. When
asked about identity cards displayed on television
establishing the so-called diplomat as an intelligence
officer, Abdollah Ramezanzadeh, the government's
official spokesman, said, "It is very easy to fabricate
an identity card, as easy as making a film."
Some conservative lawmakers and press in Iran
have accused both the Americans and Sha'lan of being
behind Jahani's kidnapping, observing that the warning
issued by the group (over alleged Iranian meddling) is
the same as that used by US Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld, implying US involvement. "It is interesting to
note that so far the group has not kidnapped any
Americans or Westerners, but Muslims," one newspaper
said.
But unlike the case of Khalil Na'imi, the
Iranian attache who was assassinated last year in
Baghdad by gunmen who have remained unknown, Jahani's
abduction has a mark and destination: Iran. Ghodratollah
Alikhani of the majlis' (parliament's) National Security
and Foreign Policy Committee told Mehr News Agency that
it was highly probable that the US had a hand in the
kidnapping. "The US pursues its own political goals
through the issue," he said.
Hoseyn
Shari'atmadari, appointed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah
Ali Khamenei as the managing director of the Tehran
daily Keyhan, said on Monday that supporters of the
occupation of Iraq were the only people who had a motive
to commit the crime. "There is evidence indicating that
the kidnappers were US forces," he told the
pro-conservative Mehr agency, adding that Iran was the
main obstacle preventing the US from realizing its goals
in the Middle East and the strongest opponent of the
occupation of Iraq.
"This gave the US a
significant motive to kidnap the Iranian diplomat. The
kidnappers, in a recorded videotape broadcast by the
al-Arabiyah network, demanded that Iran refrain from
interfering in Iraq's internal affairs, and this is the
same accusation that US Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld, US Secretary of State Colin Powell and Iraqi
Defense Minister Hazem Sha'lan made against Iran a few
days earlier."
Government spokesman Asefi
pointed out, "We have announced one too many times that
we are not interfering in Iraq. We are looking forward
to the security and stability of Iraq. As far as these
accusations, we want to hear from Iraqi interim Prime
Minister Iyad Allawi."
In remarks to the press,
Allawi has indicated that among all Iraq's neighbors,
Iran is the only country that has not invited him
officially to visit. "I'm willing to go to Tehran and
discuss all issues with our Iranian friends, but on
condition I'm invited," he said last weekend, referring
to press reports that he had received an invitation but
turned it down. (On Tuesday, Iran's official Islamic
Republic News Agency, IRNA, quoted Kamal Kharrazi,
Iran's foreign affairs minister, as saying an invitation
had been sent to Allawi.)
Since the renewal of
fighting between the Mehdi Army and the US-led coalition
forces, Iran has constantly and vigorously taken the
side of the rebel cleric, accusing the Americans of
"slaughtering innocent Iraqi Muslims and deliberately
destroying Shi'ite holy places".
The daily
Keyhan, which speaks for Khamenei, wrote on Monday that
Sha'lan was a "dyed-in-the-wool Ba'athist whose hands
are dipped deep in the innocent blood of Iraqi and
Iranian Muslims", and accused him of being "hand-picked
by the American occupiers for his services to the CIA".
According to the hardline newspaper, the
Americans and the British had moved Grand Ayatollah Ali
al-Sistani, the Shi'ites' highest religious authority,
away from Najaf to facilitate the "slaughter" of
"unprotected" Iraqi Shi'ites and Muslims. The
Iranian-born Sistani is suffering from heart problems
and flew to London last week for medical treatment.
Writing in the pro-conservative English-language
daily Tehran Times on Tuesday, Hasan Hamidzadeh said,
"The recent provocative remarks by the Iraqi interior
minister and defense minister as well as the governor of
Najaf against the Islamic Republic of Iran, which are
only meant to serve the occupiers, encouraged the
terrorist groups to kidnap the Iranian diplomat.
Unfortunately, this dangerous move took place at a time
when certain members of the Iraqi interim government
paved the grounds for such a move through their
uncalculated remarks, which were a far cry from
diplomatic norms."
Tehran is also angry that the
Americans helped members of the Mujahideen Khalq
Organization, the group that is based in Iraq and served
the toppled Saddam's regime fighting Iran, being granted
the status of war prisoners and thus covered by the
Geneva Conventions, despite the fact that the
organization is categorized as a terrorist group by the
US.
To complicate the tense atmosphere further,
Ahmad Chalabi, the head of the Iraqi National Congress,
was in Iran at the very time that a warrant for his
arrest was issued in Baghdad this week on charges of
illegal currency dealings.
Once the darling of
the Pentagon, Chalabi, 59, was abandoned abruptly by his
US backers after the CIA accused him more than a month
ago of having passed on to the Iranians the vital
information that the agency had broken Iran's highly
secret communications code.
Not only is Chalabi
accused of fraud and dealing in currency, Jordan also
wants him in connection with the bankruptcy of Patra
Bank in 1992, in which some US$20 million went missing.
Chalabi has been convicted in absentia and given a
lengthy jail term.
As if all these charges are
not enough, the former banker, who comes from a
prominent Shi'ite family, is also known for his staunch
opposition to both Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations
special envoy for Iraq on the one hand, and Allawi on
the other.
Sources in the Iraqi interim
government also suspect that Chalabi is helping fund the
Mehdi Army and serving as an intermediary between Tehran
and Muqtada.
According to most political
analysts, what Sha'lan has said against Tehran
translates the general belief of most Iraqi officials,
including some Shi'ite members of government. This might
explain the sudden hardening of Tehran's attitude toward
Allawi's interim government.
"Sha'lan's opinion
is shared by almost all members of the government," one
contact told Asia Times Online, adding, on condition of
anonymity, that some of the clerical leadership in Iran
close to Khamenei, such as in the Revolutionary Guards
and in his own secret services, are "doing their best to
prevent a new, democratic and secular political order
contrary to theirs emerging in Iraq".
According
to Iranian journalists, Allawi's recent visit to Najaf
and his call on Muqtada to lay down arms means that the
conflict in Iraq is becoming "Iraqized", meaning pitting
Iraqis against Iraqis. "But the end losers would be the
Iraqi Shi'ites," one Tehran journalist told Asia Times
Online.
To make matter worse, the Iraqi police
have raided the offices of IRNA in Baghdad and arrested
Mostafa Darban, the bureau chief, and three Iraqi
colleagues. Though there has been no official
explanation from Iraqi authorities, sources told Asia
Times Online that the measure could be related to the
fighting in Najaf, as the Iranian media have taken a
strong position in favor of Muqtada, deliberately
ignoring that he refuses to stop hostilities.
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against US forces and Iraqi police, broke out seven days
ago in Najaf, Diwaniyaah and Baghdad, leaving more than
400 people dead and wounded, most of them from Muqtada's
Mehdi Army. 
