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| Iraq-Jordan | |
| Knight-Ridder on Iranian involvement in Iraq | |
| 2005-08-26 | |
| For the record, I tend to think that a lot of this, to say nothing of the experts quoted (Katzman I can vouch for, but most here know my opinion of Cole) is a case of a journalist wanting to knock down the administration's statements on Iranian involvement in Iraq and then seeking out experts who will tell them what they want to hear. When rival Shiite Muslim factions battled in Iraqi cities this week in a worrisome new turn for the country's stability, neighboring Iran had little to lose: It supports both factions. Iran has shrewdly pursued a strategy of "portfolio diversification" in Iraq. It backs a wide range of actors - even competing ones -with support, money and weapons to ensure that it has a say in Iraq's future, Western officials and analysts said. "They are like lobbyists. They're spreading the money around, so whoever wins owes them," said Juan Cole, a University of Michigan professor and expert on Shiite Islam who's criticized U.S. policy in Iraq. Iran's maneuverings in Iraq have taken on new urgency amid last-minute wrangling over a draft constitution and the Bush administration's charges that Tehran is fueling the anti-American insurgency with cross-border weapons shipments. Those charges remain unproved, U.S. officials conceded, and are disputed by outside experts. They question why Iran's Shiite clerics would aid insurgents from the rival Sunni branch of Islam who are seeking to regain the power in Iraq they'd wielded under Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein. But Iran has spread its largesse far and wide, the officials and analysts said, in pursuing three main goals in Iraq: promoting Shiite political dominance, keeping the United States off-balance and avoiding all-out sectarian civil war on its western border. So far, it's achieved all three. "I think the Iranians feel that they are basically winning in Iraq. They feel things are basically going their way," said Kenneth Katzman, a Middle East specialist at the Congressional Research Service, part of the Library of Congress. Iran has maintained ties to secular Shiite leaders such as Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi, the former head of the exile group Iraqi National Congress, and to religious groups such as the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. It's also reached out gingerly to firebrand nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, according to the analysts and a senior U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the issue of Iran's involvement in Iraq is being debated within the American government and involves classified data. Al-Sadr's supporters battled with forces from SCIRI's military wing, the Badr Organization, Wednesday in the holy city of Najaf and other cities. The fight was part of an apparent turf war between the Shiite militias. "Iran has built ties with an array of diverse and at times competing political forces - Shiite Islamist parties, of course, but also Kurdish parties and violent groups," according to a March report by the nonprofit International Crisis Group. "In so doing, Tehran can maintain a degree of influence regardless of political developments and help steer those developments in less hostile directions," the report said. It quoted European diplomats as saying Iran has provided al-Sadr, whose forces led an April 2004 rebellion against U.S. troops, with money and arms. But Iran remains wary of the unpredictable cleric, it said. Earlier this month, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld went further, accusing Iran of allowing weapons to be smuggled across its border into Iraq for use against American troops. "It is true that weapons clearly, unambiguously from Iran have been found in Iraq," Rumsfeld said at the time. His remarks followed the seizure of a cache of sophisticated explosive devices in northeastern Iraq near the Iranian border. The devices use "shaped charges," which channel the power of an explosion and are used to destroy tanks and other armored vehicles. American military forces report seeing a sharp rise in attacks using the more sophisticated weapons in the last few months. While the shipment clearly came via Iran, who sent it and where it was headed remain in doubt, the senior U.S. official said. "There's no quick jumping to conclusions that this stuff is Iranian, and even if it is Iranian, that (it) suggests complicity up and down the Iranian government," the official said. "People are looking at this in a vigorous way." Wayne White, a former Middle East intelligence analyst at the State Department, said, "I cannot explain at all" the shipment. "If you were gun-running to your own people, you would never use that (northern) route," he said, referring to the fact that Iran's Shiite brethren are strongest in southern Iraq. Cole, the University of Michigan professor, said the idea that Iran would aid Iraq's Sunni insurgents was "completely implausible."
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| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #2 Good read, but I question Cole's logic in his statement regarding why Iran would use the northern route to smuggle in explosives when their people are primarily in the south. Hell he acts like they don't have enough spare c4 to spread around. What's a few pounds of shaped charges vs some dead Americans or better political positioning. Perhaps the shipments of explosives were meant to be used against the kurds that were organizing recent scattered anti government actions against Iran via Iranian kurdish factions, or perhaps they just want Zarq and/or the Sunnis to keep the Americans busy up north so the Shiia can do their dirty deeds with the Iranians in relative peace and quiet in the south. Stability and democracy in Iraq are not in the interest of Iran and the MMs. So why wouldn't they feed a sectarian civil war in Iraq, how would it hurt them to see the Sunnis marginalized and desperate. I argue that the Iranians do want to see civil war in Iraq and as much American bloodshed as possible in the process, and would assist Zarq or either side in fomenting such a war if necessary. Thus the shaped charges,and the northern route. Just my 2 cents. EP |
| Posted by: ElvisHasLeftTheBuilding 2005-08-26 13:51 |
| #1 Iran wants to find a way it can continue to attack the US who they have seen as day one their mortal enemy. They want nothing less than true death to America. Iran would love a weak failed state right next to them. For years they have had to use Leabanon as a launching ground to attack Israel. With a weak failed state next door they could pick up the pieces secure all Iraq;s oil and attack Israel via Lebanon All while seen as the "savior" of fellow muslims. |
| Posted by: Sock Puppet O´ Doom 2005-08-26 01:17 |