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2 Titans square up for clash in
Iraq By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
Shi'ite crescent stretching from Iraq to
the Persian Gulf states to Lebanon.
Clearly, the Hashemite kingdom, recently
accused by Human Rights Watch of mistreating Iraqi
refugees, is sowing the seeds of a front-line
state against a radical Shi'ite threat, in tandem
with Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
By all
indications, the US is nodding to Jordan's new
self-assumed role, which explains why the US is
openly courting
Syrian Islamists, such as the
leaders of the Islamic Salvation Front, who were
invited to the White House recently. Is al-Qaeda
next?!
Indeed, the Iranian media are awash
with open complaints that scores of Saudi fighters
are apprehended in Iraq each day, and yet there is
virtually no pressure on Saudi Arabia to halt the
flow of its nationals volunteering to help the
jihad in Iraq - partly against the Shi'ite
"heretics" whom they regard as illegitimate and
un-Islamic.
The Shi'ite
counter-strategy By playing the
nationalist and, to a lesser extent, pan-Islamist
card, Iraqi Shi'ites led by Muqtada could split
the insurgency camp, which has targeted Shi'ites
by attacking their neighborhoods indiscriminately,
and form a new alliance with the Ba'athists and
other religious or secular insurgent groups who
prioritize foreign occupation.
A
subsequent deflection from Shi'ite-Sunni
antagonism may reduce the chances of an all-out
sectarian-based civil war, to the detriment of the
United States' new approach in the making, which
moves away from the post-invasion goal of
majoritarian democracy. As articulated by Iranian
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali al-Khamenei in his
recent meeting with Talabani, there is now a
growing Shi'ite concern that the US is poised to
opt for a "Saddam Hussein-like" dictatorship.
Certainly, the drop in popular support for
Maliki's government lends itself to this scenario.
Should the Ba'athists ally with Muqtada's
Shi'ites, it would spell doom for any Shi'ite
group still willing to cooperate with the US, such
as Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim's Supreme Council for
Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) . Very soon,
the SCIRI may have no option but to set aside its
discord with the more militant Muqtada group and
follow a direct anti-US line partially directed
from Tehran, particularly if the US appears sold
to the new idea of giving up on majority rule in
Iraq for the sake of its own interests.
Problems with the new US approach With all the emphasis placed by US officials
on Iran's alleged spoiler role in Iraq, seemingly
verified by reports of Hezbollah's involvement in
training Muqtada's forces in Lebanon, the momentum
for getting Iran, and Syria, involved in talks on
Iraq is fizzling. This approach is favored by the
bipartisan Iraq Study Group (ISG) and defense
secretary nominee Robert Gates. Bush's policy
statement at the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization summit in Riga, Latvia, rejecting the
idea of a troop pullout, may have upstaged the
ISG's leaning toward setting a timetable.
Bush's stubborn opposition to a timetable
is coupled with the oversight of his own
military's conclusion that the insurgents cannot
be defeated, given a recent report by the marines
leaked to the media in which it painting a grim
picture of the security situation on the ground in
al-Anbar province.
Consequently, short of
a massive infusion of new troops to bolster the
insufficient troop levels currently deployed by
the Pentagon, Bush's bravado about fighting in
Iraq until victory sounds hallow. And so does the
White House's new thinking that somehow the
insurgency can be channeled into a civil war that
pits Iraq's religio-military sects against each
other. That thinking is flawed on two grounds.
First, it fails to take into account the Shi'ites'
counter-strategy mentioned above and, second, it
takes for granted that US forces could remain
insulated from the waves of civil war.
This raises a question: Assuming helpless
Iraq sinks fully in the morass of a civil war
between Iran-backed Shi'ites and Saudi-backed
Sunnis, what role will US forces play? Will they
side with the minority Sunnis and help them
resurrect the status quo ante, against the
will of some 65% of Iraqis who are Shi'ites? And
what if that war goes badly for the Sunnis, given
Iran's, and Syria's, considerable influence? Will
the US then try a rescue operation somehow and, if
so, how?
The fact is, a dragged-out civil
war, as envisaged by some Israeli pundits since
even before the 2003 invasion, will be detrimental
to the United States' interests, as well as those
of the its regional allies, and the sooner US
policymakers abandon the expectation of any short-
or long-term utility out of this scenario, the
better.
Another problem with the US
approach is that as long as there is no viable
solution to the Palestinian question, anti-US
feelings will continue to dominate the Arab Middle
East. Yet irrespective of the tenuous ceasefire in
Gaza, as Richard Haass of the US Council for
Foreign Relations put it in his recent piece in
the Foreign Affairs, "Anything resembling a viable
peace process is unlikely for the foreseeable
future."
What's in it for
Iran? In light of the debate in the US
about engaging Iran over Iraq, Iranians have begun
their own debate over the pros and cons of this.
As a case in point, Rasoul Jaafarian writes in the
semi-official website Baztab.com: "But the first
threat concerning Iran's entry into this scenario
is that wouldn't the US, willingly or unwillingly,
draw Iran into the Iraqi quagmire and afflict it
with the same cesspool that has trapped it today?
This question relates to another question, and
that is, Iran's partaking in this scenario will be
how far and to what extent?"
And then
there is the threat of al-Qaeda: "The second
danger is that Iran's entry in this theater will
be the beginning for Iran's transformation into a
target for al-Qaeda," writes Jaafarian, adding:
"Naturally, this would be a victory for the US if
al-Qaeda becomes active inside Iran."
But
al-Qaeda and associated Sunni insurgents are not
alone, and even the largely nationalist Muqtada
may react negatively if there is an Iraqi
perception of any Iranian-US common cause with
respect to Iraq. According to a Tehran analyst,
"Muqtada is such a nationalist that he is opposed
to accepting any Iranian paternalism in Iraq."
There is a growing consensus in Iran that
the US is bent on making Iran a scapegoat for its
own failures in Iraq, which might explain the
timing of Ahmadinejad's latest letter to
Americans, forcefully bashing the United States'
Middle East policy. At the same time,
Ahmadinejad's letter concedes that certain
progress in Iraq, such as the formation of a new
government and assembly, has taken shape,
deserving support. The letter's opening reference
to "common concerns" alone indicates an Iranian
readiness to engage in meaningful dialogue with
the US on Iraq and other issues of mutual
interest.
This is hardly surprising, given
Khamenei's open admission that continuing
instability in Iraq was "harmful to everyone in
the region". From Iran's vantage point, it has
played a constructive role toward the new Iraq,
reflected in bilateral trade, energy and other
agreements signed between Tehran and Baghdad, as
well as in Iran's mediation role in intra-Shi'ite
power struggles.
Complaining that the
West, and the US in particular, has gone
unappreciative of Iran's constructive behavior,
such as when Iran intervened in the US-Mehdi Army
confrontation in 2004 by urging Muqtada to desist
from further action, Iran's new, and considerably
much tougher, approach is that it may have no
choice but to play a rejectionist card with regard
to foreign occupation.
Henceforth, unless
Iran and the US agree to a suitable forum to air
their goals with respect to Iraq and related
issues, the emerging trend toward a hostile new
chapter will continue, with potentially disastrous
consequences.
Kaveh L Afrasiabi,
PhD, is the author of After Khomeini: New
Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview
Press) and co-author of "Negotiating Iran's
Nuclear Populism", Brown Journal of World Affairs,
Volume XII, Issue 2, Summer 2005, with Mustafa
Kibaroglu. He also wrote "Keeping Iran's nuclear
potential latent", Harvard International Review,
and is author of Iran's Nuclear
Program: Debating Facts Versus Fiction.
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