"As
usual, I find things there amiably awful!"
Mephisto retorts when God chides him for caviling
about evil circumstances on Earth. After two years
of predicting civil war in Iraq, Mephisto's words
come to mind now that civil war has arrived. God
helps drunks, small children, and the United
States of America, the old saying goes. Someone is
helping the United States in Iraq, although here
it might not be God but rather the other fellow.
One reads dire predictions everywhere that
civil conflict in Iraq might lead to regional war.
That is true, but no one fears this more
than the
government of Iran. Iran sent its cat's paw, the
sectarian butcher Muqtada al-Sadr, running home
from Lebanon last weekend with a message of
religious brotherhood. Iran has only one military
objective, namely to own nuclear weapons. Without
them its military is an ill-equipped rabble; with
them, it is the
dominant regional power. For
Tehran, anything else is a distraction.
"I
call upon all believers, Sunnis and Shi'ites, to
unite. All Iraqis should be brothers to each
other," said Muqtada on Sunday, after prayer
services on Friday at which 20,000 of his
followers prayed for Sunni-Shi'ite unity, and
after a set of violent attacks upon Sunnis during
the weekend. In this case Muqtada is a paragon of
sincerity. His supporters in Tehran count on the
threat of a Shi'ite rising as an instrument of
strategic blackmail against the United States, for
the Shi'ite militias can ruin Washington's dream
of a unified and democratic Iraq. If Washington's
soap-bubble pops, down goes Iran's ability to
intimidate Washington.
More wishful
thinking has been wasted on the notion of regime
change in Iran than on the lottery. The
Ahmadinejad regime represents the majority of
Iranians, poorly educated people with few
prospects in the modern world. Whom are such
people supposed to choose as an alternative?
Iran's regime cannot be subverted, unless, of
course, it becomes embroiled in a foreign military
adventure in which President Mahmud Ahmadinejad's
supporters come to dislike their role as cannon
fodder.
That is why Tehran's policy all
along has been to support US efforts on behalf of
constitutional government in Iraq to bring that
country's Shi'ite majority into power by peaceful
means (see A Syriajevo in the
making?, October 25, 2005). Despite
Iranian efforts to build up the capabilities of
Shi'ite irregulars inside Iraq, the capabilities
of the Sunni military caste remain formidable even
after the dissolution of the Saddam Hussein
regime, and the outcome of full-fledged civil war
would be uncertain. Power within Iraq now is
balanced the way the British intended it to be
when they stitched together this Frankenstein
monster of a country after World War I.
In
fact, the worst outcome from the vantage point of
Washington's interest would be a stable
constitutional government in Iraq. Once Shi'ite
elements controlled leading ministries, Iran would
have unlimited means to meddle in the classic
Middle Eastern style of infiltration, bribery and
intimidation. Middle Eastern governments, after
all, are not governments in the Western sense, but
rather hotels in which different factions rent
rooms. With footholds inside the Iraqi government,
Iran could develop forces on the ground in depth
and at leisure.
Full-scale civil war,
however, would make it difficult for Iran to stand
by while Shi'ites were slaughtered, yet open
intervention in Iraq would give Washington the
opportunity to make a horrible example of the
Islamic Republic, with or without the issue of
nuclear weapons.
Resistance to gradual
Iranization comes from the Sunni military caste,
not from foreign infiltrators, whose numbers and
military capabilities both are overrated (see Will Iraq survive the Iraqi
resistance?, December 23, 2003). The
Sunnis already have shown themselves willing to
employ suicide attacks on a scale larger than
Japan's World War II kamikazes, and cannot be
defeated except by bloody attrition (see Why Sunnis blow themselves
up, June 14, 2005). But they cannot
attain victory either. After a millennium of
martyr status, the Shi'ites are prepared to
sacrifice themselves in frightful numbers to
achieve the potential of their historic moment
(see The blood is the life, Mr
Rumsfeld!, October 12, 2005).
The Iraqi Kurds, meanwhile, have
established a quasi-independent province. They
have all the benefits of partition without the
liabilities, such as fending off outraged and
humiliated Turks.
America's military
already has repositioned to the periphery of
cities; there will not be another siege of
Fallujah. Although the proximate cause of this
redeployment was reduction of US casualties, it
has two other effects. One is to allow both Sunni
insurgents and Shi'ite militias freedom to
assemble military forces capable of inflicting
large-scale atrocities on each other. The second
is to prevent either side from massing sufficient
forces to launch a full-scale civil war.
The result will be a low-intensity civil
war that can persist more or less indefinitely.
Populations caught in the middle will do what such
populations normally do, that is, migrate to areas
of sectarian control that offer greater
protection. It will not be necessary to announce a
partition. The Iraqis will partition themselves
with household items piled into pickup trucks.
Two years ago I speculated that the United
States might steer events in Iraq toward this
outcome (The devil and L Paul
Bremer, January 20, 2004). But there is
not a speck of evidence that Washington has done
anything but stumble into a position that is as
advantageous for US interests as it is miserable
for the Iraqis. Father Joseph du Tremblay,
Cardinal Richelieu's 17th-century intelligence
chief, did this sort of thing as he perpetuated
the Thirty Years' War (see The sacred heart of
darkness, February 11, 2003). But there
is no Gray Eminence in today's Washington; the
contemporary world is incapable of producing
personalities of this sort.
Instability
favors the side with the greatest strategic
flexibility, and that is the United States. The
Russian Federation, not an enemy but at least a
competitor of the United States, wants to reduce
US flexibility. That is why Russian diplomacy is
attempting to deflect the US from confronting Iran
over the issue of nuclear-weapons development.
Washington's best move on the chessboard would be
quietly to agree to forget about "color
revolutions" in the remains of the Soviet Union,
in return for Moscow's solidarity with its efforts
to rein in Tehran.
That leaves the issue
of Saudi Arabia, where a car-bomb attack on the
country's largest oil facility on Friday cast in
relief the kingdom's potential weakness. Any
country in which foreigners hold 90% of the jobs
and most young men live off government dole will
produce a small army of fanatics. But the Saudi
business is less complicated than it looks. If
al-Qaeda can cajole and threaten Saudi officials,
so can Washington.
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dominant regional power. For
Tehran, anything else is a distraction. 
