Iran
Sparked Islamic Divide,
Iran Only Can Defuse It
By Nicola Nasser
20 October, 2006
Countercurrents.org
Tehran for the first time and
at the highest level has this week went public on the so far taboo Sunni-Shiite
divide, accused the American Great Satan of exploiting and fuelling
the historic Islamic sectarian tragedy, which is true, but offered no
way out of the divide except a verbal call for unity, which has to be
tested against the Iranian policies on the ground in Iraq, where the
Iranian call can make or break.
Iran's highest authority, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, has criticized
the United States for carrying out the policy of “divide and rule”
in the Middle East, the official IRNA news agency reported, quoting
him as saying: “The British … have taught the Americans
how to sow the seeds of discord among Shiites and Sunnis. Making Sunnis
and Shi'ites suspicious of one another ... is the policy of the Americans
in Iraq … they promote terrorism in Iraq in the name of Shiite
and Sunni. Unity is the greatest need of the region's peoples.”
Without any reference to the similarly significant Iranian “presence”,
Khamenei added: “The bare truth there (in Iraq) is the presence
of occupiers that keep interfering in affairs of the government, the
parliament, the president, the prime minister, the financial policy
making, and in security affairs.”
The sophisticated scholarship and leadership of Khamenei could not be
credited in good faith with inexperience or innocence to justify his
missing the real “bare truth” in Iraq.
He portrayed the conflict in Iraq as only “interference”
by the “occupiers” in the affairs of what he presented as
the “national” government, ignoring on purpose the “bare
truth” that it is the government which the occupiers installed
and legitimatized without any sovereignty even inside its captivity
in Baghdad’s Green Zone.
Khamenei’s confusing portrayal of the state of affairs in Iraq
could only be attributed to a premeditated policy to smokescreen Iran’s
exploits from the U.S. invasion.
Tehran also for the first time went public this week on the “superior
situation” Iran has gained under the U.S. occupation of Iraq,
a fact which makes it impossible to absolve it from being responsible
also for the state of affairs of its unfortunate western Muslim Arab
neighbor.
“Iran is now enjoying a superior situation in Iraq … Today,
many of the European, American and regional analysts and heads of states
admit that the Islamic Republic of Iran is having a powerful position
in Iraq," said special assistant to Iranian Foreign Minister for
Strategic Planning, Mostafa Moslehzadeh. (1)
Precisely this “superior situation” vindicates Saddam Hussein’s
arguments for his “pre-emptive” war on Iran in 1980. In
a bad faith reading the “superiority” Iran enjoys in Iraq
now is tantamount to sharing the Iraqi pie with the Great Satan; in
a good faith interpretation it reflects a conflict with the Great Satan
over the Iraqi pie, or most likely it is maneuvering either to make
Iraq a battle ground in case of a U.S. attack on its territory or to
use its position there as a bargaining chip to negotiate with Washington,
a possibility that almost came true earlier this year.
The Machiavellian policies Tehran pursued to gain this situation starkly
contradict with whatever interpretation a Muslim might give to Islamic
solidarity, and could hardly be defended as not being a continuation
of its 1980-88 war with Iraq, this time using grudgingly but skillfully
the American invading army instead of its own.
None could argue that Iranians would be happy with the occupation of
Iraq by the Americans and the presence of a huge American force at their
doorsteps, but none also could deny the fact that were it not for the
US occupation Tehran could not have gained its current prominence in
Baghdad.
The flare up of the sectarian conflict in Iraq, which has so far claimed
the worst bloodletting, sectarian cleansing and unleashing of an historic
genie of a long-dormant Sunni-Shiite divide is precisely the fear that
Saddam tried to fend off, backed by the overwhelming majority of Arab
regimes and people, and generously financed by his immediate Arab neighbors
who feared the regional repercussions and were ready to deplete their
budgets and fight until the last Iraqi to confine the Islamic revolution
within Iran’s borders.
Those Arab fears are also vindicated as manifested recently by the Saudi
criticism of Iran’s superior role in the Iraqi plight, Jordan’s
repeated warnings against a threatening sectarian crescent, and Egypt’s
alerts against the sectarian loyalty to Iran which compromises national
loyalties.
None could argue the historical fact that the Islamic revolution in
Iran had sparked a sectarian divide that only Iran can defuse, restrain
and contain.
This brief dwelling on the immediate history is not intended to open
hopefully healed wounds in the Arab – Iranian relations, but to
draw attention that Tehran has yet to dispel Arab doubts and to appease
Arab fears that are being pushed to the verge of scare by Iran’s
policies in Iraq.
It was an unavoidable turn of history that any Islamic revolution in
Iran could not but be a sectarian one. Iranian Muslims could not and
cannot change their religious demography or sectarian affiliation. But
for sure they can control these dictates of history as well as their
adverse regional fallout in a way that preserves a regional geopolitical
unity vis-à-vis a crushing foreign intruder.
The rising star of Iran as a regional power is in harmony with both
history and geopolitics that none in the region disputes and were it
not for the sectarian factor it would be an asset for the regional neighbors.
Within the context of a sectarian divide it would adversely affect regional
peace, security and stability. This factor precisely vindicates Arab
fears because Iran is staying as an integral part of the regional existence
but the U.S. is an intruder who will go away sooner or later.
Iran’s temptation of the prospect of an Arab country controlled
by the Shi’a for the first time in modern history is deluding
Tehran to miscalculate, to the detriment of the Shiites themselves as
well as to Islamic unity and regional peace and security.
What Arab critics see as Iran’s sectarian policies is cited as
the pretext for many Arabs to conclude that the presence of the American
occupying forces in Iraq is a guarantee against the collapse of the
country into an abyss of sectarian strife; many Arab leaders had on
record declared their opposition to U.S. exit from Iraq, which led to
counter accusations by Tehran in a futile war of words that only the
U.S. occupiers have stake in.
The sectarian divide and a rapprochement between a U.S.-installed “Shiite-Kurdish”
regime and Iran were evidently foreseen by Washington and taken into
account as positive factors in neutralizing Iran and the Iran-influenced
Shiites and Kurds of Iraq, a calculation that the current state of affairs
in Iraq vindicates as a proven anticipation.
It seems the Iranian leadership had anticipated what the former U.S.
Secretary of State, James Baker, wrote in his 1995 memoirs, that removing
the Baath would “fragment” Iraq in “unpredictable
ways that would play into the hands of the mullahs in Iran.” Obviously
Baker is also vindicated.
One of the headache questions that scare the war strategists in Washington
since 9/11, the ensuing U.S “war on terror” and the invasions
of Afghanistan and Iraq is how to abort the potential for a unified
Islamic resistance between active Sunni and Shi’a forces.
Arab public opinion has always seen in the Islamic revolution a strategic
depth which removed the U.S.-installed pro-Israel regime of the Shah
from Tehran but could not apprehend Iran’s passivity or collusion
vis-à-vis the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Hailing the occupation of the sisterly Muslim neighbor by Tehran as
innocently an ousting of a dictatorship could not be interpreted except
as in defense of the bad example of inviting the Great Satan, or any
other foreign power, to interfere in settling scores in intra-Muslim
conflicts and disputes; if the precedent is applied to Iran it would
implicitly justify calling in the American forces by the Iranian opposition
of the Mujahideen Khalq to invade Iran; what Muslim could defend it?
Changing regimes by foreign invasion is in principle rejected regionally
and internationally. No sectarian alliances or dividends could justify
it; nor could anti-Saddam vendetta.
In Iraq there is ample evidence that Iranian policies have significantly
contributed both to the sectarian divide and the U.S. exploitation of
the underlying sectarian fire. The seeds of the low-intensity civil
war that is raging in Iraq now and the de facto division of the country
have flowered in these policies.
What seems to outsiders as a sectarian divide is in fact a divide between
Iraqis who resist the U.S-British occupation and their compatriots who
opted to co-exist with this occupation in the so-called “political
process,” which was planned and legalized by the occupying powers
themselves and to which Iran subscribed from the start.
Iran’s alignment mobilized Iraqis on sectarian lines behind leaders
who followed in the footsteps of the invading armies and who were trained,
equipped and financed ironically by both Tehran and Washington, where
they still maintain offices; there was no other way for Tehran to maintain
its current “superiority” in Iraq.
Hence the sectarian divide between Iran’s Shiite-Kurdish allies
-- who are empowered by the occupying powers as the new rulers of Iraq
and immediately recognized by Tehran as the legitimate government –
and the Sunni-led resistance to the occupation and its quislings.
This is a doomed Iraqi and regional policy that will inevitably reflect
adversely on Iran’s confrontation with the U.S. over its legitimate
right to possess nuclear power for peaceful purposes. The Arab geopolitical
support is Iran’s only strategic asset that cannot be replaced
by a Shiite regime in Baghdad.
The future of Iraq and the region as well as the U.S. and Israeli occupations
will be decided positively only by a turnabout in Iran’s policies
to cement the Islamic unity between Arabs and Persians and their respective
ethnic minorities as the only regional defense against foreign intrusions;
otherwise the region will continue to be polarized on foreign lines
and terms.
The prerogatives of Islamic unity and averting a Shiite-Sunni divide
from playing into the hands of U.S. occupiers in Iraq and far beyond
in the region requires that Iran accommodates the proven historical
experience that exclusion of Arabs and Pan-Arabism deprives Islam of
its vital component, acknowledges that sectarization of Islamic politics
adversely affect Islamic unity, rejects in principle the exploitation
of foreign powers’ interference to settle intra-Muslim scores,
and translating these prerogatives into concrete policies.
Of course Iranian commitment to such prerogatives requires Arab reciprocity,
which in turn necessitates the highest level of dialogue and political
engagement.
Notes
(1) Fars News Agency quoted by tehrantimes.com on October 16, 2006.
Nicola Nasser
is a veteran Arab journalist in Kuwait, Jordan, UAE and Palestine. He
is based in Ramallah, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian
territories.
Leave
A Comment
&
Share Your Insights