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Commentary
by U.S. Alliance for Democratic Iran
Rolling
Back Tehran in Iraq
Alas, President Bush's speech writers are not
in charge of formulating and executing his
administration's policy toward Iran and Iraq.
In his Tuesday
address to the American Legion, President George
W. Bush stressed that “America is engaged in a
great ideological struggle -- fighting Islamic
extremists across the globe” inspired by two
main strains; Sunni extremism, embodied by al
Qaida; and Shiite extremism, embodied by the
ruling regime in Tehran whose “actions threaten
the security of nations everywhere.”
His equally notable statement came when he
outlined the strategic cost of failure in Iraq.
“The future course of the Middle East will turn
heavily on the outcome of the fight in Iraq. And
the two dangerous strains of extremism vying for
control of the Middle East have now closed in on
this country.”
President Bush correctly described Iran’s rulers
as “leaders who promote terror and pursue the
technology that could be used to develop nuclear
weapons” which would put the whole region “under
the shadow of a nuclear holocaust.”
Two days later, however, comes the column by
David Ignatius of the Washington Post displaying
a mind-boggling case of inconsistency between
words and actions of the administration. Mr.
Ignatius reports that instead of putting
effective, prompt and practical plans in place
to thwart Tehran’s multi-pronged destabilizing
campaign in Iraq, the political field was
effectively left open to Tehran and its proxies
during the decisive January 30, 2005, elections
in Iraq.
Once again, the State Department debunked
measures to deal a strategic blow to Tehran in
what the President has in effect described an
existential war between forces of Islamic
extremism and forces of freedom and moderation.
No wonder, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad now blatantly
declares his regime’s readiness to fill in the
political vacuum in Iraq.
Indeed, rather than heeding to warnings that
Tehran was covertly pouring about $11 million a
week to boost its puppet candidates and
dispatching nearly 5,000 Iranians to Iraq
equipped with fake Iraqi ration cards to
register to vote in the south, Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice pulled the plug on a plan
to fund “moderate Iraqi candidates, outreach to
Sunni tribal leaders and other efforts to
counter Iranian influence.” She enjoyed
then-House Minority Leader, Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s
partnership.
According to Mr. Ignatius, “Rice had agreed with
Pelosi that the United States couldn't on the
one hand celebrate Iraqi democracy and on the
other try to manipulate it secretly.” Two and
half years later, one can clearly see the folly
of such logic.
Celebrating Iraqi democracy by giving Tehran a
free hand to manipulate and hijack it, has
brought the people of Iraq the Nuri Al-Maliki’s
government, which for all practical purposes is
Tehran’s de-facto client in Baghdad. The United
Iraqi Alliance (UIA), the dominant block in Al-Maliki’s
government, is in fact a who’s-who of Iran’s
Shiite proxy groups. Iraq’s internal security
organs such as the Interior Ministry are
effectively off-shoots of Iran’s Islamic
Revolutionary Guards Corp and the Intelligence
Ministry.
Mr. Ignatius
quotes a former U.S. official who was in Iraq
during the 2005 elections, describing the impact
of “pulling the rug out from under moderate,
secular Iraqis who might have contained
extremist forces.” The former official told Mr.
Ignatius that "The Iraqis were bewildered. They
didn't understand what the U.S. was doing. It
looked like we were giving the country to Iran.
We told Washington this was a calamitous event,
from which it would be hard to recover."
Today, as anti-Iraq sectarian blood-letting,
mainly inspired and instigated by Tehran’s
proxies, is raging in Iraq, it might be hard to
recover from such a huge debacle. But it is not
too late.
While one can not underestimate the capacity of
Iran rulers and their Iraqi proxies to plunge
Iraq further in death and destruction,
politically they are weakening. This has been on
display with a series of recent bloody clashes
between rival Shiite factions which make up the
bulk of UIA. Meanwhile Iraqi efforts are
undergoing to form a majority, anti-sectarian,
independent moderate block to constitutionally
replace Al-Maliki’s government. Washington must
throw its political and diplomatic weight behind
this effort and let go of the fruit of an
election which was neither democratic nor fair.
Such initiative can hugely benefit from the
partnership with the anti-fundamentalist Iranian
Mojahedin. This moderate Islamic dissident
group, while confined to its base in Camp Ashraf
in Iraq under round the clock protection of U.S.
Army, has dedicated its resources and facilities
for national reconciliation among Iraqis of all
political, religious and ethnic stripes. They
are unquestionably on the right side of the
fight by the forces of freedom and moderation
against forces of terror and extremism in Iraq.
President Bush told the American Legion this
week that “The most important and immediate way
to counter the ambitions of al Qaeda and Iran
and other forces of instability and terror is to
win the fight in Iraq.” Alas, President’s speech
writers are not in charge of his
administration's policy toward Iran and Iraq.
(USADI)
USADI
Commentary reflects the viewpoints of the US Alliance
for Democratic Iran in respect to issues and events
which directly or indirectly impact the US policy toward
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