Iran And Iraq, Together

I'm not enough an expert to judge the significance of Iran's having brokered a cease-fire between Shia militias, one of them belonging to the Iraqi government and the other, at least still in theory, controlled by Moqtada al-Sadr. (If Iran played a role in ending the violence, did it also, by dint of its ties to certain militias, help to seed it?)

This reminds me of the propaganda victory of a few months back when Iran's Ahmadinejad was able to tour Baghdad without the enormous security blanket that accompanies much lower-ranking US officials whenever they sneak into the country.

For our politics, does Iran's influence here mean that it recognizes that it has a role to play in stabilizing Iraq? Does it panic the Saudis? Does it panic the Israelis? Does it mean that the surge has given Iran a free hand to gain credibility as the political broker while the US military did the hard work of securing the peace?

Comments

The way I understand it:

Iran wants a weak central government in Baghdad, and more power to regional and sectarian groups amenable to foreign meddling. To that end it is allied with al-Maliki and ISCI. And it wants the US out.

The US, by contrast, wants a weak central government in Baghdad, and more power to regional and sectarian groups amenable to foreign meddling. To that end it is allied (on the Shiite side) with al-Maliki and ISCI. And it wants Iran out.

The Sadrists and ex-Baathists are the spoilers: like most Iraqis outside of Kurdistan, they want a strong central government and a unitary state. Ultimately, they might want to ally with a post-election US that wants Iraq restored and its own soldiers back home. But that, ironically, would put the US on a collision course with Iran: they would be supporting opposite camps for the first time.

Posted by Hans B | March 31, 2008 1:22 PM

"while the US military did the hard work of securing the peace?" Are you kidding? What peace? Where? when? You people watch too much movies!

Posted by Kiumars | March 31, 2008 3:52 PM

If are not enough of an expert, which shows by your knowledge and your writing, then shut the fuck off.

Posted by stuipd article | March 31, 2008 4:20 PM

This is my op-ed in World Security Network on the Basra

http://www.worldsecuritynetwork.com/showArticle3.cfm?article_id=15684&topicID=26


US-Iran Stake in Basra?
written by: Nadim Koteich, 31-Mar-08

A Mahdi Army fighter stands next to a burning Iraq armored police vehicle outside a state run al-Iraqiya TV facility in Basra, Iraq, Sunday, March 30, 2008.
The clashes between the Mahdi Militia, led by the firebrand Shiite cleric Mouqtada Al-Sadr, and government troops in Basra couldn't be more confusing.
For a while now, tensions and law intensity clashes have been underway, mainly between Sadr militant supporters and those of the Badr Organization, the military wing of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC), led by Al-Sadr's rival Abdul Aziz Al-Hakim. It is a power struggle that dates back to the rivalry between the old Sadr and Hakim clerical families. It is fueled by the competition over who controls Basra, the oil capital of Iraq. Its fields account for 80% of Iraq's oil reserves
A senior Shiite cleric in Beirut who refused to be named told WSN that the news coming from Basra doesn't really tell what is happening. "The whole situation is fishy. No one knows for a fact how things started to unfold in the first place" he said. "If I may use the Marxist philosophy, I see the events taking place in Basra resembling a sort of unity between odds" the cleric added hinting to overlapping interests of Tehran and Washington.
The strife in Basra is mainly between a Shiite militia and a Shiite dominated government, who both enjoy a sort of special relations with Tehran.
However, not only Iran's first reaction lagged behind the event, it came surprisingly disproportional to the threshold of the operation that claimed around 120 lives and left hundreds injured. Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, a high-ranking Iranian cleric urged Shiite militants and Iraq's government, at Friday prayers in Tehran, to negotiate a settlement.
On the other hand, Janati, the head of the hardline Guardians Council, said that Al-Maliki is running the government with "power and wisdom". His statement offers a glimpse of Iran's tilt in the ongoing struggle towards Al-Hakim who is the leader, as well, of The United Iraqi Alliance, a coalition of mainly Shiite religious parties, which dominates the Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
Al-Hakim's relation to Iran is quite historic. He went into exile in Iran in 1980 where he helped founding the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and headed its military wing Badr Brigades. During the Iraq Iran war Al-Hakim sided with Tehran, given that the late Iraqi president Saddam Hussein killed 6 of his brothers.
Simultaneously, Al-Hakim is a close ally to the US president George Bush whom he met in Washington in Dec. 2006. He has been a bench mark intersection between US and Iran's interests. When Iran announced its readiness for dialogue with the United States, about Iraq, for the first time since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Al-Hakim wasn't far from the scene. Ali Larijani, Tehran's then chief nuclear negotiator and head of his country's Supreme National Security Council, told the Iranian news agency that his country had accepted a request from Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim that Tehran negotiate with Washington.
Both Tehran and Washington see Al-Hakim as essential to the trembling political process in Iraq.
Mouqtada Al-Sadr, offers more complicated hand-outs to Iran and US interests.
His declared cease-fire, recently renewed, serves as one of three pillars behind the highly praised success of the Surge Strategy. His grass rooted popularity among impoverished Shiite mass in big cites and suburbs, provides him with a pivotal position in any national reconciliation effort.
At the same time his militia will always loom as potential security crisis. It twice launched uprisings against the U.S. occupation in 2004 and was blamed for sectarian death squad killings at the height of Iraq's brutal civil strife.

As for Tehran, it has funded and trained his Mahdi Militia, which played a major role prior to the cease-fire in undermining US-led efforts to stabilize Iraq. Al-Sadr's widespread social network owes a major slice of its budget to Iran. It is believed that he had taken refuge in Iran when he disappeared for the scene between January and May 2007.
However, Al-Sadr's nationalistic brand and his high self conscious and political egocentrism makes him way less tamable than what Iran wants him to be.
It is common to hear his supporters criticizing Iran and charging it with advancing its own interests at Iraqi's expense. It is believed as well that Iran managed to ultra-radicalize certain factions within the Sadrist Militia to shake Mouqtada's ship and manipulate his force.

The extent, though, of a US Iranian intersection in the ongoing operation in Basra is yet to be determined.

Posted by Nadim Koteich | March 31, 2008 6:14 PM

Why would Iran like to destabilize Iraq?? The top officials in Iraq's present Govt., including Maliki have spent years in Iran, when Saddam was ruling with an iron fist in 1980s and USA was supporting Saddam. It is only the USA which wants to foment violence; the USA has armed the Sunnis (who lost all power after Saddam was overthrown). Why does USA want to keep up violence?? Answer - to justify its presence in Iraq.

Since, you are not an expert, therefore you should spend your time in reading rather than writing; then only you can become an expert.

Posted by Tadit Kundu | March 31, 2008 6:15 PM

The Americans keep poking their nose in where it doesn't belong, without any understanding of what they are doing!

Then they keep complaining that what they have done has helped Iran, Russia, China......

The solution is simple, stop bitching and get the hell out of Iraq, where you should never have gone in the first place.

What do you expect if the world's most powerful military is being lead by the world's most stupid leader.

Oh I forgot, he was voted by the majority of the Americans to lead the country, TWICE!

Posted by Adalfo | March 31, 2008 6:27 PM

Iran has far more interest in a secure Iraq than the US!

Posted by hass | March 31, 2008 6:42 PM

to adalfo,

George W. Bush was not elected by a majority of americans. In 2000, he lost the popular vote, it is the failure of the American 'Delegate' voting system that failed us twice. We are not proud of him.

And the reason we are staying in Iraq, which I was against going into, is the same reason Iran wants to be a part of it. It is the same reason countries since the beginning of time have had to do things like this...POWER. It is a human fault.

Posted by Greg | March 31, 2008 7:34 PM

Stop....stop...stop.....the lot of you.

If there is one thing you all need to realize it is this... The one entity that has a lot to gain by the US staying in Iraq is Israel. Always has been...always will be. With the US in Iraq, the israili inteligence gatherers, shit disturbers, pot stirers..etc.... have a free hand to blend in under the auspices of the coalition of the willing and do / try what they may. Who do you think has always egged the US on. Those with a pro -Israili agenda at heart.

Ofcourse with the US millitary already in Afganistan, what better way of trying to put a stop to the palestinian support that Iran gives whether it is millitary toys, money or inteligence...The israilis want a stop to it. Putting a squeeze on Iran from the east and the west was the itention.....The lives of American solidiers for the security of Israel at the expense of continued injustices to the Palestinian people. Is there something wrong with this picture????

Posted by Khwaj | March 31, 2008 8:52 PM