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Rude awakening for
Iran
A Special Correspondent
TEHERAN - The string of explosions that
rocked Teheran, the southern city of Ahwaz and two
other Iranian cities on Sunday and Monday, has
sharpened Iranian-Arab relations, raised the
possibility that Iran is being targeted by a
covert operations campaign and threatened to put
Iran on a collision course with its Persian Gulf
Arab neighbors, just days before presidential
elections on Friday.
In the worst violence
to hit Iran in over a decade, four bomb blasts
struck government buildings in the capital of the
oil-rich Ahwaz province near the border with Iraq,
killing 10 people and wounding at least 86. They
were followed a few hours later by two small bombs
in central Teheran that killed two more and
wounded four. The bombing campaign continued on
Monday as three more bombs exploded in Iran's
southeastern town of Zahedan and the clerical city
of Qom - the seat of Iran's clerical theocracy -
with no injuries reported.
A spokesman for
Iran's security services immediately blamed
supporters of ousted Iraqi president Saddam
Hussein for the attacks, accusing "groups that
were close to Iraq's Ba'ath Party and Saddam
Hussein and are now based in Arab countries".
"The terrorists of Ahvaz infiltrated Iran
from the region of Basra [in Iraq]," Ali Agha
Mohammadi, a spokesman for Iran's top
security-related body, the Higher National
Security Council, told the AFP news agency. "These
terrorists have been trained under the umbrella of
the Americans in Iraq," he charged, and added that
Iran suspected there were links between British
troops across the border and the London-based
Ahvaz Arab People's Democratic-Popular Front.
Several people were killed in April when
riots surged through Iran's ethnic Arab province
of Khuzestan, which locals refer to as Arabestan.
Protests centered on fears that Iran's government
was planning to ethnically dilute the province by
injecting Persian settlers. At the time,
suspicions were voiced that Saudi-funded agents
were behind the violence. The event demonstrated
that Iran's multicultural milieu is also a
weakness that can expose it to foreign meddling.
Intelligence Minister Ali Yunesi said the
bombers were based outside of Iran, but refrained
from identifying specific countries. "We have
proof of a link between these people outside Iran
and some intelligence services in the world,"
Yunesi was quoted as saying by the official
Islamic Republic News Agency.
Whether
Sunday's violence was orchestrated by pro-Saddam
elements or militant Islamic Sunni Arab foreign
fighters remains unclear. Sunni fundamentalists
have declared war on Iraq's Shi'ite majority
population and targeted them through a bombing
campaign targeting mosques and other public
spaces.
Although officially denied,
another scenario points the finger of blame to the
exiled opposition group Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK),
currently based in Iraq. The Marxist organization
was responsible for a horrific string of terrorist
attacks in the early years after the revolution of
1979 that killed a veritable who's who of Iran's
political leadership. They have largely been
neutralized in recent years, to the extent that
the Iranian government allowed some former members
to be repatriated earlier this year.
"This
could be a joint operation between the MEK and
former Iraqi intelligence agents aimed at
sabotaging the elections," said Kayhan Barzagar, a
scholar at Tehran's Center for Scientific Research
and Middle East Strategic Studies. "In Teheran,
it's only the MEK who have the operational power
to launch something like this."
A
spillover of Sunni-Shi'ite tensions from Iraq to
Iran would mark a dangerous regional escalation.
Arab Sunni insurgents have chafed at Iran's
perceived close links with the Iraqi Shi'ite
majority government currently in power in Baghdad
and apparently seek to provoke civil war through a
campaign of assassinations, bombings and
intimidation.
"Many bombings inside Iraq
are clearly aimed at dividing Sunni from Shi'ites,
so why not commit acts across the border to divide
Persian from Arab - especially following April's
Arab-related tensions in Ahwaz?" asked Wayne
White, a former analyst at the US State
Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research.
The immediate signs are that the bombings
may have had the effect of intimidating some
Iranians from voting in this Friday's presidential
elections. Tehran considers participation in these
elections almost as important as their result, due
to the expectation that Washington will equate
poor turnout with an Iranian vote of no confidence
in their government.
"I'm not going to
vote, I'm afraid of another explosion," said Ahmad
Ali Yacoub, a 36-year-old government employee in
Ahwaz. "I think Friday will be a very dangerous
day."
Election front-runner Hashemi
Rafsanjani and majlis (parliament) Speaker
Gholamali Haddad Adel accused the perpetrators of
seeking to harm public participation. "On the
contrary, experience of the past 27 years has
proved that every time people feel the threat,
they display greater resolve to contribute to
national or political issues."
A European
Union diplomat in Teheran told Asia Times Online
there is little concern on the part of the
international community regarding the conduct of
the elections. "Ahwaz is an area that occasionally
has problems, but is too far away from the center
of power to affect political stability. Since they
did not attack an electoral office or a
candidate's center, we can't even term what
happened an attack on the elections."
So who did it?
Scenario
1: Iraqi Sunnis strike Iran
Iranian officials immediately pointed the
finger of blame at pro-Ba'athist groups that they
claimed infiltrated Iran from neighboring Iraq.
The bombings came five months after elections in
Iraq brought a majority Shi'ite, pro-Iranian
government to power and as controversy rages in
Iraq over the role played by the Badr Brigade, an
Iranian-trained and funded Shi'ite militia that
has been accused by Sunni leaders of killing their
followers, including clerics.
Some Sunni
leaders in Iraq have accused Shi'ite Iran of
meddling in Iraqi affairs by backing Shi'ite
Muslim clergy and politicians in a bid to convert
Iraq into an Islamic republic. Iranian officials
have strenuously rejected these charges, saying
that Iran's model could never be replicated in a
country that has as many religious factions and
minorities as Iraq.
Another theory
suggests that the exiled Iranian opposition group
MEK collaborated with members of Saddam's
intelligence apparatus in orchestrating the
bombings. Analysts who spoke to Asia Times Online
discounted MEK involvement in this attack, arguing
that the organization's access to Iran had been
severely curtailed.
"They have been
thoroughly infiltrated and are currently boxed up
in Camp Ashraf, in Iraq, incapable of launching
something along these lines," said one Iranian
analyst. The MEK has denied its involvement.
Scenario 2: Al-Qaeda's
revenge on Iran
The possibility that the
Iraqi wing of al-Qaeda might have carried out its
first strike inside Iran has been floated by some
analysts, who note Iran's increasing policy shift
in Afghanistan and Iraq - al-Qaeda's primary
strongholds - toward a more pro-Western line.
Iran's Revolutionary Guard established
contact with the US Army during the
Washington-backed campaign against the Taliban
regime. They are said to still conduct
consultations with the US over maintaining
security in Afghanistan and Iraq - something that
must clearly have aggravated the al-Qaeda
leadership.
An al-Qaeda fingerprint would
go some way toward discounting allegations by the
George W Bush administration that Teheran is
coordinating some of its policies with Osama bin
Laden's organization.
An Iranian analyst
for a Western embassy suggested that al-Qaeda was
upset over Iran's pro-Western policy shift toward
Iraq and Afghanistan and had been looking for a
sensitive time to embarrass the Shi'ite regime in
Tehran.
Al-Qaeda have been known to seek
to sway elections, most notably in Spain last
year, when a massive train bombing killed 200
people and led in part to Spanish prime minister
Jose Maria Aznar - who had supported the invasion
of Iran - being voted out of office in March 2004.
More recently, bin Laden underwent an image
makeover when he addressed American voters shortly
before the US presidential elections in November
last year.
Scenario 3:
Hardliners play hardball
Iran's
hardliners are concerned at the disarray endemic
in their camp at a time when reformist candidate
Mostafa Moin appears increasingly likely to claim
the second place in Friday's elections and force a
second round run-off with favorite Rafsanjani.
The domestic scenario argues that the
bombings have been orchestrated by hardline regime
elements anxious to see one of the four former
Revolutionary Guards' candidates - Mohsen Rezai,
Mohammad Baqir Qalibaf, Mohammad Ahmad Nejad and
Ali Larijani - win the election and follow more
security-oriented policies.
"There is a
school of thought that argues we should espouse
the Turkish and Pakistani models," an Iranian
analyst told the Asia Times Online, "where a
strong military supervises the civilian
government."
The current presidential
elections have been the most dominated by the
military yet in the history of the Islamic
Republic, with more ex-army candidates running
than at any time previously. Hardliners believe
one of the four candidates with Revolutionary
Guard backgrounds will be better qualified to
safeguard the country than civilian leaders such
as outgoing president Mohammad Khatami or
Rafsanjani. They also appear to be gaining in
prominence at the expense of the clergy, who are
increasingly seen as a spent force not in tune
with Iranian society.
Scenario
4: Gulf Arab meddling
Two
months after ethnic unrest rocked Khuzestan, the
series of bombings - already claimed by three Arab
irredentist groups - could be the work of agents
funded by Gulf Arab states with politically
significant Shi'ite minorities who take no
pleasure in seeing the expansion of Iran-backed
Shi'ite influence in the
region.
Allegations that Saudi-backed
agents are meddling in Khuzestan surfaced two
months ago in the aftermath of the ethnic Arab
riots. While Arab agents have been carrying out a
"Sunnification" program in Shi'ite neighborhoods
of Baghdad such as Qadhimmieh, the latest
developments could mark an attempt by Riyadh to
extend its reach into Iran. Such efforts would be
a reply to alleged former attempts by Teheran to
export the Shi'ite revolution to Bahrain, Saudi
Arabia, Kuwait and Yemen.
Attempts to
convert Khuzestanis by Saudi Arabian-funded agents
appear to be paying off, although on a small
scale. "You have people who have been Shi'ite for
200 years who are converting to Sunnism," one
well-connected Iranian consultant for an
international organization told Asia Times Online.
"Everyone is more or less aware of that.
"In Qom, the clerics know that there is a
campaign going on and that it is having some
positive results for the Saudis, but I don't know
whether they're thinking of taking measures to
fight it."
A failure to address local
grievances over the economically deflated state of
the province could allow conservative Persian Gulf
governments to seize a foothold in the region.
Already worried over the prospect of a Shi'ite arc
developing that stretches from Teheran to Baghdad,
Damascus and Beirut, Saudi Arabia and the
conservative Sunni sheikhdoms around it are
consulting with Washington on how best to contain
Iran.
Conclusion
Unless
continued, the bombings are unlikely to
destabilize the country, but have contributed to a
considerable increase in pre-election tension. The
string of attacks erupted just days before
Iranians go to the polls and a few days before the
release of an International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA) report on Iran's nuclear program that is
expected to criticize the country for its handling
of its nuclear affairs.
The IAEA's
negative report is expected to touch off another
round of accusations by Washington, heightening
Washington-Teheran tensions and giving ammunition
to regime hardliners eager to see a
security-oriented, former member of the military
come to power.
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times
Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us
for information on sales, syndication and republishing.) |
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