17 December 2004
With the date fast approaching for the first parliamentary elections since Saddam Hussein was toppled, Baghdad’s neighbors are already fretting about the likely outcome: a Shiite majority for the first time in modern Iraqi history. That could lead to a dramatic shift in the geopolitical balance between Shiite and Sunni Muslims across the Middle East. Expressing the concerns of many in the region, Jordan’s King Abdullah last week issued a stark warnings that a Shiite crescent stretching from Iran into Iraq, Syria and Lebanon could emerge if pro-Iranian parties and politicians dominate the new Iraqi government. US President George W. Bush joined the chorus this week, warning Iran against meddling in Iraq’s affairs. As far as Tehran is concerned, any election in Iraq — assuming it’s free and fair — is bound to be in Iran’s interest, by virtue of its neighbor’s Shiite majority. Energy Intelligence Middle East correspondent Ruba Husari reports from Tehran on Iran’s strategy towards Iraq, and its repercussions on Iran-US relations.
Iraq’s interim defense minister, Hazem Shaalan, this week accused Iran of being the “prime enemy” of Iraq and of running a major terrorist ring inside the country. A secular Shiite, close to interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, Shaalan was firing the first shot in an election campaign that many in Iraq and the region fear could result in turbaned clerics ruling Iraq.
Accusations about Iranian meddling have been heard ever since Saddam and his regime were toppled. But as the stakes rise, so do the tensions. Fighting for survival on several fronts, both domestic and international, the Iranian government itself regards Iraq as a major security threat that, if not managed carefully and pragmatically, could lead to a new confrontation that draws in the US — a possibility that Tehran dreads even to think about.
Iran regards the US presence in Iraq as its biggest security threat. Since Bush included the country in its axis of evil — along with Iraq and North Korea — Tehran has been living with the specter of being next on the list of candidates for regime change.
But America’s less-than-stellar experience in Iraq has injected Iran with a dose of self-confidence that many Iranians believe was the main motive for building bridges with Europe and reaching an agreement with the European Union on the suspension of uranium processing and enrichment activities. And as long as the US remains bogged down in Iraq, Iranians, from taxi drivers to politicians, believe Washington won’t turn on Iran in its attempts to establish a new Middle East order.
But the US doesn’t have to go to war to create trouble for Iran; it can do it from inside Iraq. More than 20 months after the official “end” of the US-led war in Iraq, Iranians wonder why the US is still accommodating members of the Mujaheddine-Khalq organization, the armed opposition movement that has been waging an armed struggle against the Islamic republic for years. Tehran had expected the US to dismantle the group, which was for years hosted and supported by Saddam. Given its declared objective of toppling the ayatollahs in Tehran, Iranians are suspicious to the point of paranoia as to how and when the US might use the organization against them.
Paradoxically — given that Iranians are generally happy to see the Americans drowning in the Iraqi quagmire — Iran also views the chaos inside Iraq as a threat, for fear it could lead to disintegration. “If Iraq starts becoming disintegrated, other regional forces would want to interfere. That’s not in our interest,” says Amir Mohebian, editor of the conservative Resalat newspaper. Regional forces could include any of Iraq’s Sunni neighbors — Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Syria or Jordan.
Iran’s leaders — whether the radical mullahs represented by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the more moderate reformists led by President Mohammad Khatami, or the pragmatic conservatives in the middle– have been weighing up the dangers. Their response has been pragmatic, as well as open to all possibilities.
“Because Iraq is all about uncertainties, Iran has kept its options open,” one Iranian political analyst says. “The Iranians have prepared themselves to deal with all the different outcomes: elections and an independent government, a government subservient to the US and even the possibility of continuous instability, civil war and disintegration.”
Western diplomats in Tehran call the approach a “dual policy with contradictory objectives.” On one hand, they say, the government has exerted influence over its allies to allow for a smooth transition of power from the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority to an interim government, namely by advising the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri) and Daawa Party earlier this year to set aside their concerns about Kurdish claims to autonomy and sign the interim law governing Iraq until adoption of a new constitution.
On the other, Iran has been conducting a more aggressive policy on the ground. The aim, the diplomats say, is partly to keep the US busy, and partly to show Washington how vulnerable it would be if it attacked Iran. “The Revolutionary Guards are very active in Iraq supplying money, arms and training,” one diplomat says. “It even has a covert policy towards Sunni insurgents.”
Iranian analysts say that’s all part of keeping its options open. It has a finger in every pie, but at the same time would not let the situation get out of control.
They cite as an example Iranian intervention with radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr during the two uprisings his Mehdi army led against US troops in Najaf this year. Tehran gave al-Sadr support and direction until it deemed he had gone beyond the “red lines” drawn by Iran, and that his actions were becoming too costly. According to Mohebian, who describes himself as a conservative with an open mind about the West, “we advised him that war is not in the interest of Iraq or the Shiites. Their interest is in real democracy. We gave him advice not to go too fast.”
The episode was a milestone in Iran’s relations with Iraq, but the choice was easy, Mohebian says. “Imagine the enemy is in the house of a neighbor and fire breaks out. The enemy decides to put it out, so that’s fine with us. If the fire increases, it could endanger us.” The same goes for Iraq. “If instability in Iraq can help the Iraqi people give a signal that the US should get out, it’s not a bad thing. But if the situation starts getting out of control, then the fire could spread to Iran.”
Even though it rejects accusations of interference, Iran is far from idle in Iraq. It knows it can exert a lot of influence, not simply to prove it’s a power to be reckoned with and can’t be overlooked, but, more important, to turn the situation to its own advantage. “If Iran wants to cause trouble in Iraq, it can do so and the US knows that well. But Iran can also help make Iraq stable,” says Mohebian.
There have been abundant expressions of goodwill. First, Tehran effected a rapprochement with the interim government after its appointment in June. Second, it has supported the Iraqi elections and said it’s against any postponement, as advocated by some Sunni factions. In recent weeks, Khatami has said Iran is willing to help the US get the job done and leave Iraq.
“Iran supports free elections in Iraq that are representative of all Iraqis because it knows the outcome is in Iran’s interest,” Mohebian says.
One of the cards at Iran’s disposal are its Shiite allies in Iraq. It has a long-standing relationship with the al-Hakims. Sciri head Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim and his brother, Ayatollah Mohammad Baqr al-Hakim, who was assassinated in Najaf last year, both lived in exile in Iran for years, and the former still makes regular political pilgrimages to Tehran.
The black-turbaned Hakim, who for a long time led Sciri’s armed wing, the Badr Brigade, from Tehran, heads a list of 228 Shiite election candidates created under the auspices of Iraq’s top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. The list, which is expected to draw the bulk of the vote from Iraq’s Shiite majority, includes the pro-Iran head of the Daawa Party, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, and nuclear scientist Hussein al-Shahristani, who also fled to exile in Iran after escaping from Saddam’s jails.
For Iran, the election stakes are high. Although analysts say Iranian officials have come to terms with an Iraqi state that’s not a replica of the Islamic republic, a strong Iraqi state considered a US puppet would not be in Tehran’s interests.
Iran’s friends in Iraq — al-Sadr, al-Hakim and al-Jaafari — have all proved amenable to listening to big brother’s advice. That’s because “brotherhood is more effective than neighborhood,” Mohebian says.
Although Iran has so far shown restraint in Iraq, analysts say a number of factors could provoke it into a less calculated response — if it sensed a threat emerging from Israel, or the US tried to use the Mujaheddine- Khalq or Kurds to stir up unrest in Iran, for example.
And there are numerous other grounds for provocation, given “there are so many unresolved issues in the history of the relationship between the two countries,” he adds. One is the border. The boundary of the shared Shatt al-Arab waterway, at the entrance to the Gulf, is still in dispute after Saddam reneged on a 1975 border treaty. The new government has yet to announce its position.
Domestic politics could also jeopardize a balanced policy towards Iraq. Iran holds presidential elections next year, which most believe will not turn up a reformist successor to Khatami. If a radical conservative is elected and events in Iraq look more hostile to Iran, pragmatism might vanish, Iranian analysts say.
For now, reformists’ failure to deliver on political or economic change and conservatives’ increasing control over who runs for office, especially after their victory in this year’s parliamentary elections, are creating apathy towards the May elections. Iranian analysts say that unless radicals put forward a moderate candidate to counter the unpopularity created by their grip on parliament, pragmatic conservatism could triumph.
An exponent of this trend is former president and speaker of parliament Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who now heads the powerful Expediency Council. His return to power as leader of a centrist faction looks more likely by the day, the Iranian analyst says. Mohebian, who is known to be close to Rafsanjani, agrees. “A centrist who can maneuver between the two camps of the reformists and the radicals can rule better. We need cooperation between the two to resolve economic problems and create jobs for the next generation,” he says.
While Khatami is regarded as an intellectual “who wants to treat every disease with words,” Rafsanjani is considered more politically active. But he has yet to announce his candidacy. Official contenders in the race so far are former foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati, also a top foreign policy advisor to Khamenei, and former Revolutionary Guards chief and Expediency Council secretary Mohsen Rezai. Another Khamenei aide, Ali Larijani, is considering running.
Rafsanjani told a recent Friday prayer meeting that if there’s someone the US needs to talk to, it’s Iran. Rezai has reportedly said that he if is elected, he already has a plan to deal with the US.
Strategy towards Iraq is decided by the Supreme National Security Council, the top security body on which all factions are represented, but the decision is not factional. “Iraq is a top security issue, just like the nuclear issue. Whatever people’s positions are, it’s the supreme leader’s office in the final resort who prevails and the decision is consensual,” Mohebian says.
Khamenei’s fiery speeches about US “massacres” in Falluja, which incited riots outside the British embassy in Tehran, where demonstrators called for the expulsion of the British ambassador, have been dismissed as for public consumption. “He’s the leader of the Islamic world and he had to distinguish himself from Khatami’s reconciliatory discourse,” the Western diplomat says. “He also had to take into consideration the hard line preached by the Qom clerics and couldn’t be seen as lenient.”
Iran’s apparent strategy towards Iraq — whether led by radicals or pragmatists — is to bet on a clash of interests between the US and Iraqis. Many Iranians believe the US would in no way be happy to let the Shiite majority run the country with a free rein. And that could give Tehran enough ammunition in its struggle to win recognition from the US. At the same time, it’s an open secret in Tehran that the Revolutionary Guards control long stretches of the border with Iraq and their agenda is not necessarily always the same as politicians.
(Published in Energy Compass Dec. 17, 2004)