In
Iraq, Iran’s Arab
Credentials Are Made
By Nicola Nasser
15 September, 2006
Countercurrents.org
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s
latest visit to Tehran was just another occasion to highlight that Iran
is compromising its Arab credentials in Iraq, and to raise more questions
about whether Tehran and Washington are in collusion or in collision
in Baghdad than giving answers to Arabs who do care to have Islam as
a unifying force between the Arab and Persian neighbouring nationalities
against foreign interference in the region.
When President George W. Bush never stops repeating that “success
in Iraq is necessary for the security of the United States” (1)
and his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad pledges “full
security” (2) for Bush’s Iraqi regime, one could not but
wonder whether Iran and the U.S. are in collusion or in collision in
Iraq.
Jumping from a red carpet reception to another from Washington to Tehran
in less than two months raises questions about the role of al-Maliki’s
government as well as about the widely-reported verbal collision and
the de facto cooperation, or at least coordination, in Iraq between
Iran and the U.S., which have no diplomatic ties since the Islamic revolution
swept away a pro-U.S. regime in Tehran in 1979.
On July 26, al-Maliki addressed the Americans. “When (Iraqi and
American) blood mixes together in the field, aiming to achieve one goal,
this blood will help in establishing a long-lasting relationship between
us. Our relationship will stay forever,” he said. 47 days later
he addressed the Iranians after talks he described as “very constructive”
and called Iran “a very important country, a good friend and brother,”
Al-Maliki said.
Only a magician or the leader of a nation of the weight of the former
USSR could reconcile and mobilize the resources of ostensibly two antagonists
like the U.S. world great power and the Iranian regional great power
to serve his country’s interests at the same time, which al-Maliki
is not.
A third more realistic interpretation is that both powers have converging
agendas in the wretched country and have, in an ironic moment of history,
worked either together or in harmony to bring to power in Baghdad a
government that both bombastically claim as their own and both describe
as democratically representative of the people whose independence, state,
territorial integrity, resources and historical cultural identity they
are unmercifully ravaging.
And none argues that al-Maliki’s government is at the same time
pro what Washington dubs as the Iranian “axis of evil” and
what Tehran labels as the U.S. “Great Satan.”
“We will complete the (U.S.) mission (in Iraq). It's in our interest,”
Bush said in July and his Iranian counterpart pledged on Tuesday: “Iran
will give its assistance to establish complete security in Iraq because
Iraq's security is Iran's security.” Doesn’t this complementary
roles sound as if Iran and the U.S. have a joint venture in Iraq!
However both nations continue their verbal exchanges over Iraq, which
smokescreen their negation on the ground.
Commenting on Ahmadinejad’s pledge of “full security”
cooperation with Iraq, and his call on the “unwanted (U.S.) guests
(to) leave the region” and not Iraq only, White House spokesman
Tony Snow said: “We just have to take a look at precisely what
it means,” suggesting that Tehran was “part of the problem”
in Iraq. (3)
But the Arabs and not the U.S. administration are the ones who have
real interest to know what the Iranian leader meant!
Iran’s passivity and de facto coexistence with the U.S.-led NATO
presence in Afghanistan only serves as a precedent to Arab sceptics.
Leaving alone Arab ideological or political antagonists, Iran’s
Arab friends, Arab advocates of Islamic fraternity with Iran and Arab
defenders of a joint Pan-Arab-Iranian front against foreign hegemony
in the region owe Tehran an interpretation that clarifies its role in
Iraq, where its Arab credentials are essentially made, without of course
marginalizing Iran’s controversial contributions to the Arab –
Israeli conflict which need a separate review.
The Arab-Iranian future cooperation, especially with the GCC countries,
the Syrian-Iranian 25-year old regional coordination which the U.S.-led
western strategists are currently strenuously looking for ways to break
it, Iranian involvement with Lebanese and Palestinian resistance movements,
and the maintenance of the regional political stability, which historically
was based on the peaceful coexistence among Islamic theologies, all
depend on this overdue Iranian interpretation.
Among important non-Iranian factors, the Arab perception of the threat
emanating from Tehran’s intention to “export” its
Islamic revolution have alerted the regional status quo, pushed the
incumbent regimes to emergency measures of self-defense, and finally
engulfed the region in an eight-year bloody war.
The perception is still lingering on and the “export” of
revolution is still in the horizon, and the antagonists are confirming
publicly while protagonists are secretly struggling against their doubts
that Tehran is espousing a sectarian agenda, leading some regional capitals
to warn against an emerging Middle East anti-regional status quo and
anti-American Shiite arch.
No more than in Iraq these fears are given concrete justifications.
The sectarian basis of Iran’s support or non-support of the mushrooming
more than 120 Iraqi political factions is antagonizing not only the
Baathists but also all the other pan-Arab Iraqi opponents of the Baath
regime, and is bloodily pushing the country to the brink of a civil
war that in addition to the Iraqi people only the Iraqi pan-Arabs are
left to fend off and defend Iraq’s national unity, as the antithesis
of the post-U.S. invasion status quo.
The sectarian divide is the only approach to enable Tehran to gain influence
on the ground; it is the pretext the U.S. repeatedly cites to keep its
occupation forces as the arbiter in the country; the Israeli Jewish
state which bases its statehood on a purely religious identity foment
it for high strategic stakes to prevent an influential Arab country
from regaining its statehood; the U.S. and Iran-backed Kurdish separatists
see it as a prerequisite to fend off the Arab majority from curbing
their autonomous status and their aspirations for independence; and
the sectarian-based militias and their leaders will have no other grounds
for any power base without it.
Regional and world repercussions are too obvious to ignore. “Grim
forecasts are already circulating at the CIA. They predict that the
blood feud between the Iraqi Sunnis and Shiites could spill over into
Iran and Saudi Arabia. This could prompt a fratricidal Islamic war that
would endanger the whole world's oil supply.”(4)
The “excellent” bilateral ties hailed by Ahmadinejad during
al-Maliki’s visit, his pledges to “completely support the
Iraqi government and parliament” and his promise that “Iran
will provide assistance to the Iraqi government to establish full security”
(1) should have been more than gratefully welcome statements were they
not extended to a government that was engineered, sustained, protected
and still commanded by the generals of the U.S.-led occupation army.
Ahmadinejad’s statements on Iraq’s “security”
boils down under scrutiny to securing the government of the U.S.-led
occupation.
The more than 10 million Iraqis who were mobilized by sectarian and
ethnic incitement to vote this government into power in elections financed,
protected and given legitimacy by the occupying power is a fact that
nonetheless does not legitimize an illegitimate status quo that the
Iranian leader promises to secure.
Ahmadinejad can help al-Malki to develop his government into a representative
of a truly independent Iraq by empowering this government against the
foreign occupation, which requires a U turn in Iran’s strategy
vis-à-vis Iraq during the past fifty years. But his and al-Malki’s
seems a completely different agendas.
Al-Maliki came to power on a security three-pronged agenda: Fighting
“terrorism,” dissolving militias and national reconciliation.
Iran, al-Maliki’s government and its predecessors, and the U.S.
occupying power are and were always keen to confuse the Iraqi resistance
with a minority of foreign-linked or foreign fighters whom they accuse
of fomenting sectarian violence and “terrorism” in Iraq.
Al-Maliki reportedly demanded that Iran secure its side of Iraq’s
longest borders against the infiltration of those al-Qaeda-linked fighters
and arms, and certainly Ahmadinejad could and might deliver on this.
He also might but so far could not deliver on al-Maliki’s second
demand to fight the Iraqi national and Islamic armed resistance, which
al-Maliki condemns as “terrorists.”
This ever growing resistance is the major threat to al-Malki’s
government, which his Iranian host pledged to secure, and it is also
the same threat to the foreign occupation.
It was noteworthy that Ahmadinejad did not publicly condemn this resistance,
but he neither voiced his support nor called on Iraqi “friends”
to join or support it. Tehran is still officially subscribing to the
so-called U.S.-adopted “political process” to engineer a
pro-Washington regime in Baghdad.
Ahmadinejad could also deliver on the second item of al-Maliki’s
agenda, i.e. dissolving the militias, all sixteen of them are sectarian
militias; His silence on al-Maliki’s demand to dissolve the militias
was noteworthy; but to do so goes against Iran’s regional strategy,
especially in Iraq.
The sectarian approach is the only guarantee for Iran to maintain any
credible influence on the ground in Iraq, as Iran’s alliance with
the Kurds in the north, especially during the 1980-88 war with Iraq,
was always pragmatic and compromised by the presence of a large Kurdish
minority in Iran itself with the same national aspirations like their
brethren in Iraq.
How could Tehran agree to dissolving the militias it sponsored, financed,
armed and used as a “fifth column” during the eight-year
war with Iraq and prepared, alongside the similarly sponsored Kurdish
Peshmerga in northern Iraq, to continue the U.S. inconclusive war, which
evacuated Iraqi troops from Kuwait in 1991, to topple the Saddam-Hussein-led
Baath regime in Baghdad.
Their mission was bloodily aborted in 1991, but it was done by the U.S.-British
invading armies in 2003; Iran’s militias grudgingly followed in
the footsteps of the occupying forces, which failed them twelve years
earlier; a fait accompli of coexistence and integration was created
between the two sides to lead the “new Iraq.”
How could Ahmadinejad contribute to Iraqi national reconciliation without
a clear-cut anti-U.S. occupation stance, commitment to cut Iran’s
lifeline to Iraqi militias and a U-turn in Tehran’s policy vis-à-vis
the Iraqi resistance? Iran seems unable to resist its lucrative dividends
of the fait accompli in Iraq.
Betting on Iranian connivance was a US tactic from the start: “Dick
Cheney, Secretary of Defense under George H. Bush, opposed a full-scale
invasion in the Iraq war of 1991. Saddam Hussein, he was certain at
the time, would not last long once the Iraqis had been driven out of
Kuwait. He even made private bets on the outcome.” (5)
Ahmadinejad’s statement that, “We regard progress, independence
and territorial integrity of Iraq as our own” should be tested
not only against the realities of the Iraqi status quo, but also against
the realities of recent history, which have crushed Iraq to rubble as
Iran was watching on the sidelines.
His cordial call on the American “unwanted guests” to leave
the region in general and not Iraq in particular was heard on the backdrop
of his normally firebrand rhetoric and gave credence to media reports
that al-Maliki was mandated to make a breakthrough in U.S.-Iran deadlocked
relations after a reported U.S flexibility vis-à-vis Iran’s
nuclear program.
The undeclared Iranian desire to let the Americans continue the inconclusive
Iran-Iraq war and finish off the Baath in Iraq is not enough convincing
justification to stand on the sidelines while the Iraqi state is being
dismantled and the Iraqi people dispersed into sectarian and ethnic
pieces jumping on the throats of each other, let alone Iran’s
active involvement in Iraq under the U.S. occupation.
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.
Notes
(1) http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/07/20060726-1.html,
July 26, 2006.
(2) Statements quoted here were reported by agencies on Tuesday, September
12, 2006.
(3) Wires on September 12, 2006.
(4) Der Spiegel online: September 12, 2006.
(5) Ibid.