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22
February 2007
DEADLY TRIANGLE? US FOREIGN POLICY,
IRAQ, AND IRAN
It is now a month
after President Bush’s dramatic pronouncement of a US “surge” in Iraq,
consisting of more than 20,000 additional troops and up to $1 billion in
economic projects. Yet, in many respects, it is still unclear what those
troops and additional funds are supposed to accomplish. Leave aside that
there has been no strategic clarity beyond assertions of an invigorated
Iraqi political system and a general triumph over the ill-defined
insurgency, there has been little definition of tactical objectives. Who
exactly will be confronted and defeated by the additional troops and
vanquished by changes that supposedly strength Iraqi governance and
administration?
While the vast majority of reaction to Bush’s
plan was critical of its general ambition, the sceptics grappled for an
explanation of motive that would prompt the President to reject
alternatives such as the proposals of the Iraq Study Group. One
assertion was that Bush and close advisors were “delusional”; another
that he was hyper-rationally increasing short-term US involvement
to hand off a poisoned chalice to a Democratic successor in 2009. Then
there was the cynical evaluation that the troop increase was tied not
only to Iraqi political “reform” but to passage of legislation giving US firms control
over Iraqi resources, including 75 percent of profits from oil revenues.
There may be elements of truth in all the
above, especially the silver lining of an economic bonanza whatever the
cost in more American and Iraqi lives. I think, however, that the plan
behind the “surge” may have only emerged in the days after the Bush
speech. Put bluntly,
Iraq --- “liberated” and now
broken --- may have become a pawn in another US contest, this
one with the Iranian Government.
Iran,
of course, has never been in the good graces of this Administration. In
January 2002 it was placed alongside Iraq in the “Axis of Evil”, even though the
President at that time was the “moderate” Khatami and the Iranian
Government had been supportive of the removal of the Taliban from Afghanistan. But
while the focus of American efforts was upon the removal of Saddam
Hussein,
Iran was a secondary
nuisance, even
if some in Washington were remarking, “Everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men want to
go to Tehran.”
Indeed the logic of the US
strategy was that, with the installation of a suitable Iraqi Government,
the restored American position in the Persian Gulf would effectively
contain
Iran politically, militarily, and
economically.
That is why the Bush Administration made what
may prove to be one of its greatest among many errors, rebuffing Iranian
co-operation in the toppling of Saddam and maintaining pressure on Tehran through expanded propaganda efforts and
links with Iranian dissident and exile groups. The nuclear issue,
elevated in 2003 when Iran admitted to enrichment projects,
provided a suitable foundation for the American challenge to a supposed
Iranian menace.
The irony was that this linking of a “good”
Iraq and a contained
Iran would eventually subvert
not Tehran but Washington. The Bush Administration tried to
isolate key Shi’a political and religious leaders in Iraq, notably
Ayatollah Sistani, on the grounds that they were influenced by Iran
while installing the right Shi’a --- secular Iraqi exiles like Ahmad
Chalabi --- in the Iraqi leadership. By the time that the US Government
realised this was leading to chaos rather than a happy, pro-American Iraq, the Sunni-led insurgency was
far too advanced to be overcome and many in Shi’a communities were
irretrievably alienated from the Coalition Provisional Authority. With
each collapse of an American reconstruction project or military
offensive, the greater was the chance that Tehran could move --- not with the vaunted
Shi’a militias but with propaganda, social, and economic initiatives ---
to fill the Iraqi vacuum.
For the reality has always been that much of
the indigenous Iraqi leadership emerging after “liberation” would have a
cordial relationship with its neighbour to the east. After all, groups
like the Supreme Council for the Islamic Republic of Iraq, led by Hakim,
were forged in the Iran-Iraq war and maintained during Saddam’s
murderous campaigns against Iraqi Shi’a (it is rarely noted in the
Western press that
Kurdish
leaders, notably President Talabani, have also maintained close links
with the Iranian Government). A lot of the fencing since the
ill-fated attempt to put Chalabi in charge has centred upon putting in
place Presidents (Iyad Allawi, al-Jaafari, al-Malaki) who were not too
offensive to either Washington or Tehran, but the key figures behind the
scenes--- notably Hakim and Ayatollah Sistani --- have remained
constant.
Perhaps the one American hope in 2007, at the
grand political level, was to find a common front against the new local
bad boy, Moqtada al-Sadr. (Forget, by the way, that the American
strategy is geared towards defeating an external “terrorist” menace like
al-Qa’eda. That has always been a sideshow in Iraq, first to provide an erroneous
justification to topple Saddam, then to deflect attention from the
growing indigenous insurgency.) That’s because al-Sadr was a threat to
all the key factions --- Sunni groups, SCIRI, and Ayatollah Sistani ---
as well as the Iraqi Government. Indeed, his emergence from a cleric
based in Sadr City in
Baghdad to a
figure of national standing may be the most significant political
fallout from post-liberation chaos.
On the surface, that’s what the US Government
was moving towards at the end of 2006. The insistence to al-Maliki that
he had to confront the Mehdi Army, al-Sadr’s militia, was matched by
Hakim’s talks in Washington with the Bush Administration and Vice President
Cheney’s mysterious trip to Saudi Arabia. And, from what can be
made from sketchy information about the “surge”, the new US units were to join Iraqi Special Forces in an
incursion into Sadr City.
Here, however, is where the move of Iraq from focus to pawn intervenes. A
logical strategy against al-Sadr would entail co-operation with the
Iranian Government,
who
also see the cleric as an unwelcome challenge to SCIRI and other Shi’a
groups. Far from incidentally, this coincides with the Iraq Study
Group’s recommendation to open discussions with Iran about the Iraqi situation.
Instead Bush’s speech and Rice’s elaboration have made clear that Tehran, as much as and
probably more than al-Sadr, was the American target.
The current strategy dates from last autumn
amidst
“a very active interagency discussion…about measures to take, and
sequencing”, in the words of a senior official. On the surface, the
target was
Iran’s nuclear programme, with
pursuit of a UN resolution endorsing sanctions, but this too was only a
manoeuvre in a larger quest. The other US steps --- from international
denunciation of President Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust denial to financial
and economic measures to choke off Iran’s access to global markets to
despatch of US carrier groups to the Persian Gulf to cultural outreach
such as the tour of Iran by American wrestlers to authorisation to
kidnap and kill Iranians inside Iraq, are all part of the “package” to
undermine the Iranian regime.
So what does this mean for the “surge”?
Logically it means the
US offensive is over even as it
starts, with the Mahdi Army already following instructions
“to melt away and disappear” and
al-Sadr’s organisation focusing on its own rebuilding projects. It’s
one matter
for the al-Maliki Government to overcome its qualms and join the
Americans against al-Sadr’s militias, it’s another to pursue that
risky alliance while showing hostility to the Iranians and risking the
alienation of SCIRI and other Shi’a groups. Even if a military push into Sadr City
brought a token success rather than expanding the conflagration in
Iraq, as the Mahdi Army
counter-attacks not only in Baghdad but
in other cities including Basra, the
political issues--- who governs Iraq? --- are taken even further from
resolution.
Now it may that the Bush Administration is so
short-sighted, as the planning for the 2003 war established, that it has
not even gotten this far in strategic thinking. Far more likely,
however, is a dubious “win-win” strategy. Negatively, the
US wins even if this surge fails
because blame for its demise can be placed on Iranian-supported
insurgents. (Lo and behold, certain US
press stories after the announcement of the “surge” tried to portray
Moqtada al-Sadr as a close ally of Tehran.) Positively, the US “wins” because further Iraqi instability makes
its case that Iran must be confronted. Thus
episodes such as the raid on the Iranian liaison office in Erbil and the
kidnapping of an Iranian diplomat in Baghdad
(which followed the detention of two other Iranian diplomats in
December) should be seen as symbolic displays of force --- Iraq is ours and
if you don’t like it, we can take this further. As a US official told the Washington Post,
“We're a power, too [is the message to Tehran]. Your power is not unlimited. You can't
go anywhere and do anything you want.”
The problem is that, even as the
US
flexes its muscles vis-à-vis Iran inside Iraq, proclaiming that Tehran is the sponsor of
the insurgency, the Iranians proceed by putting money and resources into
the country for non-military activities such as hospitals (aid which is
suitably hailed by Iranian broadcasting services). And, if it is the
Americans rather than the Iranians who are associated with further
deterioration of Iraqi conditions, then Washington
has to make a more serious decision about a “surge”: does it check the
Iranian advance with an escalation not of rhetoric but of operations ---
propaganda, subversion, possibly covert operations --- against Tehran? It is then that those who are
advocating a violent showdown, such as Vice President Cheney’s Chief of
Staff with his claim that 2007 is “the year of Iran”, may come to the
fore and
US air strikes become more than a contingency plan.
As Zbigniew Brezinski, the former National Security Advisor, has warned:
If the United States continues to be bogged down in a
protracted bloody involvement in Iraq, the final destination on this downhill
track is likely to be a head-on conflict with Iran and with
much of the world of Islam at large… A mythical historical narrative to
justify the case for such a protracted and potentially expanding war is
already being articulated.Archive
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