Iraq's
Fate Hanging On A New Axis
By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
24 November, 2006
Asia
Times Online
While
the US is actively exploring alternative options to salvage its intervention
in Iraq, regional realities are dictating their own dynamic, not necessarily
in tune with the United States' objectives. Slowly but surely, a new
realignment is shaping up that is making Washington nervous - a Tehran-Baghdad-Damascus
axis.
The possibility of such a
"strategic alliance" being formed, to quote a headline in
Tehran's conservative daily, Kayhan, is high, given this weekend's summit
in Tehran that brings together the presidents of Iran, Iraq and Syria.
(That's two out of three of the United States' "axis of evil"
- Iran and Iraq, with the third being North Korea.) This comes at a
volatile and uncertain time marked with the continuing bloodbath in
Iraq, growing tension in Lebanon and the stalemated Arab-Israeli conflict.
On Tuesday, Iraq announced
that it was restoring full diplomatic relations with Syria after a 26-year
break, saying the move would increase cooperation on security.
The Kayhan editorial said,
"America's fear of the trilateral meeting is very natural, since
this alliance can translate into a new crisis for the United States
at a time of the breakdown of the system of decision-making in that
country." It further stated that while Iraq's deadly instability
was the immediate reason for the Tehran summit, the issue of "strategic
alliance" among the three countries went well beyond that.
Predictably, the US, which
has been prodding both Syria and Iran to play a more constructive role
in Iraq, has been lukewarm to Tehran's initiative for the trilateral
meeting. Various US government spokespersons have repeated the old accusations
of Iran's and Syria's "meddlings" in Iraq, with a Pentagon
official claiming that some 70 to 100 foreign fighters crossed into
Iraq from Syria each month.
This coincides with new reports
in the Israeli and Western press on Iran's alleged al-Qaeda connections,
vigorously denied by Tehran, which insists that it has itself been a
victim of al-Qaeda terrorism in the past and that the Wahhabi terrorists
are vehemently anti-Shi'ite.
Meanwhile, on the eve of
the summit, the assassination of Pierre Gemayel, a fierce Christian
and anti-Syria leader in Lebanon, has been seized on by US President
George W Bush, who has pointed the finger of blame toward both Iran
and Syria. This adds to the complexity of the Middle East scene wrought
with multiple, simultaneous crises.
There is now a growing and
realistic fear of the "Iraqization" of Lebanon and the "Lebanonization"
of Iraq, with both countries descending to the depth of a bloody civil
war far worse than anything now.
From the prisms of Tehran
and Damascus, Israel is the only country that potentially benefits from
such a nightmare scenario that they believe must be avoided at all costs.
Yet the fragile truce in Lebanon may work in the United States' favor
as a lever with regard to Syria and Iran with respect to Iraq, given
the fact that unlike Tehran and Damascus, Washington has no intrinsic
interests at stake in Lebanon.
Thus it could be that Lebanon
will prove to be the Achilles' heel of the emerging axis. Clearly, the
complex inter-relationships between Iraq and Lebanon require further
scrutiny by strategists in both Tehran and Damascus, nowadays pressured
by Washington as if they have identical interests.
Not so, and recently in his
major foreign-policy speech, British Prime Minister Tony Blair made
a point of referring to the divergent interests of Iran and Syria in
the region. This resonates with the view of some political analysts
in Tehran, such as Professor Kamran Taromi of Tehran University. He
has written: "Iran may very much prefer to have stronger links
to the Arabs which are neither at the mercy of the [Syrian Bashar al-]Assad
regime nor constrained by Syrian interests. Iraq could provide just
that."
The issue, then, is about
Damascus' preparedness to enter a new strategic alliance with Iran and
the Shi'ite-dominated new Iraq that would tilt the regional balance
primarily in Iran's favor and likely diminish the influence of Saudi
Arabia and, to a lesser extent, Syria's former ally, Egypt.
The driving forces
Tehran and Damascus agree on the hegemonic intentions behind the United
States' invasion of Iraq and share fears of the US leviathan putting
itself at the disposal of Israel, which pushed vigorously for the 2003
invasion through its vast network of influence-peddlers in the US. However,
there are solid grounds for their present initiative toward setting
new patterns in inter-regional relations, instead of passively observing
the US-Israel machinations for a "greater Middle East" dominated
by their particular geostrategic interests.
Doubtless, another common
fear is the political and security meltdown inside Iraq, aggravating
Iranian and Syrian fears of spill-over insecurity, given their porous
borders with the "new Iraq" - which increasingly looks like
a stateless country partitioned into the competing fiefdoms of armed
factions.
In fact, Iraq's insecurity
is a double-edged sword, simultaneously affording the US a weapon with
which to threaten Iran and Syria, both of which, in turn, use the same
insecurity and the potential for even greater insecurity against the
US-led coalition forces.
Concerning the latter, the
Kayhan editorial cited above poignantly states that there is little
terrorism in the "nine Shi'ite provinces and five Kurdish provinces"
of Iraq today, and that Muqtada al-Sadr's Medhi Army has succeeded in
creating a protective ring for Baghdad's million and a half population.
Another important point raised by Kayhan is: "Americans are strongly
in favor of separating Iran's nuclear dossier from Iraq's security dossier,
so that they can pressure Iran at one point and yet take advantage of
Iran's support elsewhere. But this is not possible." This, in turn,
raises another question: Does Damascus entirely share Iran's interest
in linking the two issues?
The answer to this question
touches on the Syria-Israel conflict and the desirability of Iranian
(nuclear) support or even deterrence for Syria against Israel, which
has shown absolutely no tangible sign of movement toward peace with
Syria. This assumes, for the sake of argument, that one day Tehran decides
to go nuclear full-force based on strategic calculations.
Consequently, irrespective
of much talk of "strategic uncertainties" in the Middle East,
Syria and Iran are convinced about Israel's warmongering and sub-imperialist
intentions and its successful "rent-a-superpower" manipulation
of the US. This drives Syria's and Iran's proactive search for new tools
of deterrence and regime survival, including, but by no means limited
to, their common "spoiler role" in Iraq.
But there are limits to that
role for both Tehran and Damascus, which must calculate the intended
and unintended consequences of runaway insecurity in Iraq spreading
beyond Iraq's long borders with both neighbors.
After all, the bottom line
is that Syria and Iran are of one mind with respect to the twin pillars
of their Iraq policy, that is, Iraq's national unity and territorial
integrity. Syria is fearful of Iraq's disintegration impacting its nearly
2 million Kurds, in light of the Syrian government's crackdown on Kurdish
protesters in March 2004. This could erupt again if Iraq's Kurds reach
full autonomy.
Iran, on the other hand,
is rattled by the Americans' and Israelis' open support for Kurdish
irredentism inside Iran, and this forms yet another common bond among
Tehran, Damascus and the central government in Iraq, which has a Kurdish
president (Jalal Talabani) who is due to visit Tehran shortly.
Challenges and opportunities
for Tehran
As far as Tehran is concerned,
the Iraq crisis is both a regional and an international crisis representing
a multi-dimensional policy challenge. The visible intensification of
chaos in Iraq poses a major threat to Iran's national-security interests
that requires from Iran a multi-layered response at both regional and
international levels.
No wonder Tehran's leaders
are pushing for a multilateral approach toward the Iraq crisis as a
key "damage control" measure that will, it is hoped, minimize
the potential for damage and attain a better regional situation in the
(near) future, instead of the currently growing quagmire.
In his recent Friday-prayers
speech, Iran's former president, Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani,
pointed at the irony of the US seeking Iran's support to "tow them
out of the bottom" of Iraq's morass, openly wondering what incentives
Iran would have to do so. A response to this question was given by James
Baker, the former US secretary of state and now head of the bipartisan
Iraq Study Group (ISG). In a recent meeting with Iran's ambassador to
the United Nations, Mohammad Javad Zarif, he reminded Iran that Iraq's
crisis is also a crisis for neighboring Iran.
Reportedly the ISG will recommend
direct US dialogue with Iran and Syria over Iraq, and Baker and his
colleagues must now be encouraged that both countries are showing serious
signs of improving relations with Iraq, reflected most vividly in Syria's
initiative to normalize diplomatic relations with Baghdad after 24 years.
Thus the weekend's summit
in Tehran may prove a prelude to dialogue with the US, which continues
to occupy Iraq at exorbitant price and yet without any prospect of "military
victory", to paraphrase US statesman Henry Kissinger.
Turning the challenge of
Iraq's (in)security into an opportunity for Tehran and Damascus, a modus
vivendi with the US is now a distinct possibility, although opposition
will come as stern objections from Israel and the pro-Israel forces
encircling the White House.
Yet irrespective of the latter,
and the relentless Israeli disinformation campaign aimed at torpedoing
any Western policy shift on Iran, eg, by spreading the rumors of an
Iranian nuclear test per a report in the Jerusalem Post, Iran continues
to push for its revised and invigorated Iraq policy based primarily
on its highly intertwined Iraq and US policies.
What the US invasion of Iraq
managed to do almost overnight was to turn the long-standing Iran-Iraq
dispute into an extension of Iran-US relations, as a result of which
today it is nearly impossible to disentangle the two issues. This is
at least so as long as Iran perceives the "new Iraq" less
as an independent state and more as a continuously occupied state that
it must penetrate and create zones of influence both to deter the US
threat and to enhance its regional standing.
"Let us not forget that
the Iraq crisis today is also a crisis of American hegemony," a
Tehran political analyst told this author recently, adding that a net
benefit of this "double crisis" for Iran has been the absence
of an invasion by the US - the augment being that in all probability
the US would have invaded Iran by now had it succeeded in Iraq.
Iran's dilemma, however,
is that a complete failure of the US in Iraq is not in Iran's interests
either, given Iran's fear of terrorism, mass refugees and irredentism
from behind its vast western borders with Iraq. Tehran and the occupying
powers may have their own interests in mind, but their common fear of
Iraq's collapse is what could ultimately heal their great divide.
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.
Copyright 2006 Asia Times
Online Ltd
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