Bush seeks his enemies' help in
Iraq By Gareth Porter
WASHINGTON - To avoid failure of its
mission in Iraq, the administration of US
President George W Bush has been driven to seek
the help of two major enemies - the Sunni
insurgents and the government of Iran - but both
initiatives have failed to make progress because
officials were not given any real negotiating
authority.
US officials in Baghdad are now
pursuing contacts with both declared enemies, with
the aim of obtaining their cooperation in
overcoming otherwise seemingly
insurmountable obstacles to success in Iraq. In
both cases, however, the White House has been
unwilling to approve concessions required to reach
a deal benefiting both sides.
Administration policymakers have
apparently recognized that, without the help of
Iran and the Sunni insurgent leaders, it faces the
likelihood of spiraling sectarian violence,
undiminished Sunni armed resistance, al-Qaeda
terrorist havens and predominant Iranian political
influence.
Some US officials came to
realize in 2005 that US policy was leading to
consequences that contradicted its larger
interests. Its main Iraqi allies, the militant
Shi'ite parties, were aligned with its main enemy,
Iran, while US forces were fighting against Sunni
insurgent organizations whose longer-term
interests lay in opposing both al-Qaeda and Iran.
Iran held a strong and possibly decisive
influence in Iraq because of its close ties with
militant Shi'ite political-military groups. The
extent of that influence was driven home in July
when Iraq's Shi'ite Defense Minister Saadoun
Dulaim, on a visit to the Iranian capital,
discussed possible military cooperation between
the two countries, only to back away under US
pressure.
But US Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay
Khalilzad recognized that it might be necessary to
use Iran's influence to induce more moderate
behavior by the Shi'ite parties.
Meanwhile, US officials figured out,
belatedly, that Sunni insurgent organizations
could actually help advance US interests in
eliminating terrorist havens in Iraq, as well as
limiting Iranian influence. They recognized that
the secular and Ba'athist Sunni insurgent leaders
are strongly opposed to the Abu Musab al-Zarqawi
organization's ideology and tactics, and have even
clashed with the al-Qaeda-related groups on some
occasions.
Furthermore, as with the Sunni
political leaders who ran in last month's
parliamentary elections, leaders of Sunni
insurgent groups are strongly opposed to Iranian
influence in Iraq. Thus the Sunnis fighting
against the occupation actually represented
potential allies.
Last autumn, Khalilzad
pushed for significant adjustments in US Iraq
strategy on both Iranian and Sunni insurgent
fronts, with partial success. He revealed in an
interview with Newsweek magazine in late November
that he had been authorized by the White House to
"engage the Iranians", and described it as "an
adjustment" in policy.
A few days later,
Khalilzad told ABC News that he would talk to any
insurgent groups except for the Zarqawi group and
those who were still loyal to former Iraqi
president Saddam Hussein.
Two months
later, an Iraqi delegation to Tehran carried a
letter from Khalilzad proposing US-Iranian
cooperation on Iraq.
But Khalilzad was not
allowed to negotiate with Tehran. US State
Department spokesman Sean McCormack pointed out to
reporters that the ambassador had "a very narrow
mandate ... and it deals specifically with issues
related to Iraq".
Iranian Foreign Minister
Manoucher Mottaki immediately said Iran had no
intention of negotiating with the United States.
However, it is clear that Iran is willing to reach
agreement on ways of stabilizing Iraq, provided a
broader range of issues is also on the table.
On May 4, 2003, according to a Financial
Times story 10 months later, a Swiss diplomat
conveyed to the US State Department an Iranian
proposal for a "grand bargain" that would result
in coordination of Iranian and US policy toward
Iraq, support for a two-state Palestinian-Israeli
solution and an end to Iran's nuclear-enrichment
program in return for US normalization of
relations and dropping "regime change" from US
policy.
But neo-conservatives in the
administration, led by Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld, hoped for the collapse of the Iranian
regime, and the White House rejected the proposal.
Despite the fact he has nothing to offer
the Iranians, Khalilzad continues to seek Tehran's
help in stabilizing Iraq. The London-based
Al-Hayat newspaper quoted both Iranian and Iraqi
sources on January 4 as saying that Khalilzad had
sent a letter to Iran with an Iraqi Defense
Ministry delegation proposing that the two
countries coordinate policy with regard to Iraq.
The implication of the present US
diplomatic policy is that the White House feels it
can still coerce the Iranians to do their bidding
on Iraq. The Iranian government, however, clearly
believes it holds the stronger bargaining chips in
dealing with the United States, despite continuing
US military threats, because of the seriousness of
the situation in Iraq.
On Saturday,
Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad declared that
the United States deals with Iran "in a very harsh
and illegal language, but ultimately they need us
more than we need them". This was apparently a
reference to the US need for Iran to help
stabilize Iraq.
The Iranian statement,
coming a few days after Shi'ite leader Abdul Aziz
al-Hakim decisively rejected any possibility of
changes in the Iraqi constitution, suggests that
Iran may have gotten its Iraqi Shi'ite allies to
support its effort to pressure Washington into
serious negotiations with Tehran. Such
negotiations would cover both Iraq and a more
fundamental bargain over the nuclear fuel cycle
issue and the US policy of regime change.
The administration's overtures to the
Sunni insurgents have suffered from a similar lack
of decisiveness. A front-page story in the New
York Times on January 6 reported that US officials
had opened "face-to-face discussions with
insurgents in the field" and were "communicating
with senior insurgent leaders through
intermediaries".
The message being
conveyed to those groups, according to one
insurgent leader, is that Washington wanted their
help in the fight against al-Qaeda. Abu Amin, a
former Iraqi army officer who commands Sunni
guerrillas in Yusefiya, told the Times that US
officials were asking: "Do you have a relationship
with al-Qaeda? Can you help us attack al-Qaeda?
Can you uproot al-Qaeda from Iraq?”
The
report made it clear, however, that US officials
had no mandate to suggest any accommodation with
the insurgents. The leader of the Iraqi Islamic
Party, Tariq al Hashimy, told the Times he did not
think the new US contacts with insurgents had made
any progress because the US would not discuss the
insurgents' demand for a timetable for withdrawal.
A subsequent article in the Times said,
"American and Iraqi officials believe that the
conflicts present them with one of the biggest
opportunities since the insurgency burst upon Iraq
nearly three years ago."
But the story
made it clear that the insurgents will not
cooperate without a sign of US willingness to
negotiate with them on withdrawal. "It is against
my beliefs to put my hand with the Americans," one
Iraqi insurgent leader said.
Despite its
need for the cooperation of Sunni insurgents and
Iran, the White House has not yet accepted the
reality that it cannot simply command such
cooperation. Given this contradiction, further
"adjustments" in US strategy must eventually be
forthcoming.
Gareth Porter is a
historian and national-security policy analyst.
His latest book, Perils of Dominance:
Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam,
was published in June 2005.
