It
Is No Use Blaming Iran For
The Insurgency In Iraq
By Patrick Cockburn
08 February, 2007
The
Independent
It
is scarcely surprising that the Iranian government believes that the
United States is behind the kidnapping of one of its diplomats in Baghdad
on Sunday. The Iranians say he was seized by 30 uniformed men from an
Iraqi army commando battalion that often works with the US military
services in Iraq.
The US had already shown
its contempt for any diplomatic immunity protecting Iranians in Iraq
by arresting five officials in a long-established Iranian office in
the Kurdish city of Arbil last month. The White House had earlier authorised
US forces to kill or capture Iranians deemed to be a threat.
It is striking how swiftly
Washington is seeking to escalate its confrontation with Iran. Its rhetoric
has returned to the strident tone so often heard when the US was accusing
Saddam Hussein in 2002 and 2003 of hiding weapons of mass destruction
that threatened the world.
No serious observer of Iraq
since the US invasion believes for a moment that Iran has sustained
the Sunni insurgency or played an essential role in the rise of the
Shia militias. It was obvious that when Saddam fell Iran would benefit.
He was, after all, the arch enemy of Tehran, and the Iranians were delighted
to see him go.
A second inevitable consequence
of the end of Saddam's predominantly Sunni regime was that the Iraqi
Shia, 60 per cent of the population, would take power in Baghdad. Foreseeing
and wishing to avoid just such an outcome, President George Bush senior
refused to send the US Army to Baghdad after his victory in Kuwait in
1991.
What does Mr Bush hope to
achieve by confronting and possibly even going to war with Iran? Within
Iraq it is a policy of great foolishness, because it will be seen as
being anti-Shia as well as anti-Iranian. The Iraqi Shia are suspicious
that the US is planning to rob them of power. Since last year, for the
first time, a majority of the Shia support armed attacks on US-led forces.
There are some benefits for
Washington in escalating the conflict with Iran. The Bush administration
has specialised in creating demons responsible for all the ills of Iraq.
First there was Saddam Hussein and then Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Both were
killed last year, but the war has continued to escalate.
Iran is now being promoted
as the new demon. It is supposedly behind the provision of roadside
bombs that have killed so many US and British troops - though the technology
involved in these simple but deadly devices could generally be found
in a garden shed.
Iraq has long been short
of everything except weapons. Every Iraqi family possessed arms even
under Saddam Hussein. In the early 1990s he introduced a buy-back programme
by which he would pay for heavy weapons handed in. One tribe in south-east
Iraq turned up with three tanks which they offered to sell to the government
if the price was right. Deeming the official offer too low, they returned
the tanks to their tribal arsenal.
It will be very difficult
for the US to pursue an anti-Iranian policy in Iraq and the Middle East
while supporting a pro-Iranian Shia government in Baghdad. Strangely,
the only powerful party that is as vociferously anti-Iranian as Mr Bush
is the Baath party. It has for long justified its opposition to the
takeover of government by the Shia majority by pretending they are Iranian
pawns.
In the Middle East as a whole,
the new US anti-Iranian policy has more to recommend it from an American
point of view. There is plenty of anti-Iranian and anti-Shia sentiment
around. Sunni Arab leaders in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan were embarrassed
by the success of the Shia Hizbollah in the war in Lebanon last summer,
compared to their own supine incompetence. Little wonder they are happy
to join the US in whipping up feeling against the Shia and the Iranians.
Mr Bush is acting rather
like cynical Tory politicians at the end of the 19th and the beginning
of the 20th centuries who played "the Orange Card" over Ulster.
Claiming to be safeguarding the empire, they stirred anti-Catholic and
anti-Irish bigotry to their own political advantage. Mr Bush may reap
similar benefits by playing the anti-Shia and anti- Iranian card.
One expert on Iraq asked
me in perplexity: "Even if Bush does launch a war against Iran,
where does he think it will get him? He will still be stuck in Iraq
and the Iranians are not going to surrender. He will just have widened
the war."
The answer to this question
is probably that the anti-Iranian tilt of the Bush administration has
more to do with American than Iraqi politics. A fresh demon is being
presented to the US voter. Iran is portrayed as the hidden hand behind
US failure in both Iraq and in Lebanon. The US media, gullible over
WMD, is showing itself equally gullible over this exaggerated Iranian
threat.
The Bush administration has
always shown itself more interested in holding power in Washington than
in Baghdad. Whatever its failures on the battlefield, the Republicans
were able to retain the presidency and both Houses of Congress in 2004.
Confrontation with Iran, diverting attention from the fiasco in Iraq,
may be their best chance of holding the White House in 2008.
The writer is the author
of 'The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq' published by Verso
© 2006 Independent News
and Media Limited
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