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5 Iran and the failed US
Iraq policy By Henry C K
Liu
expense of Qom, but only
if Iraqi Shi'ism adjusts its "quietism". Yet the
Iraqi Shi'ite community, now with a new taste of
political power, is unlikely to take kindly to
Iranian dictates in either theology or secular
politics.
When Iraq fell under the control
of British imperialism in 1915, millennium-old
Persian influence was systematically purged with
new
Arabic nationality laws prohibiting non-Arab
foreigners except Britons to hold high government
office. An Iraq under US neo-imperialistic control
can be expected to be equally unwelcoming of
Iranian political influence under the cover of
religious union.
Any clumsy Iranian
attempt to assert coercive geopolitical leadership
in Shi'ite Iraq could cause a backlash and damage
the spiritual prestige and theological influence
of Tehran and Qom in Shi'ite communities in the
wider Arab world, alienating the very elements
Iran aims to rally against the US infidel.
A confident and secure Shi'ite-dominated
secular government in Iraq leads naturally to
policy and doctrinal cleavages not only between
Iraq and Iran, but also in Iran's own unique
Islamic theocratic system, where both spiritual
influence and political legitimacy are derived
from militant religious orthodoxy. Tehran and Qom
stand integrated through the velayate faqih
principle, which rules through a clerical
jurisprudence in which the top cleric is the
spiritual leader of the Islamic state, in a
reverse form of Caesaropapism - the concept of
combining the power of secular government with, or
making it supreme to, the spiritual authority of
the Christian Church.
An alternative and
influential source of religious authority beyond
Tehran's control could seriously test the
doctrinal basis of Iran's theocratic regime
founded on a decidedly narrow interpretation of
Shi'ite theology made valid by Western
imperialistic abuse. The spiritual rebirth of
Najaf will not only challenge Qom and give Arabs a
bigger say in the greater Shi'ite world from
Lebanon to Yemen, but will also raise considerable
theological support for those forces within the
Persian power structure that question the
continuing prudence of centralizing
religious-political authority in the hands of the
faqih (leader or just jurist) and a small
group of ecclesiastic allies in the Guardian
Council, the judiciary and security apparatus, and
the Expediency Council. As Western cultural and
economic imperialism recedes from the region, the
flame of Islamic fundamentalism will flicker from
a loss of fuel.
The political evolution of
post-Saddam Iraq is emerging as an important
factor that affects factional rivalries within the
Iranian power structure. Elements in Iranian
domestic politics justify geopolitical solidarity
with Arab Shi'ite forces in Iraq's emerging
post-Ba'athist polity by pointing to a more
threatening prospect of Iraqi Shi'ites being
co-opted by an anti-Iran US agenda in Iraq. This
agenda includes the imposition of a US version of
a pro-West moderate Muslim Arab state in Iraq that
is schismatically hostile to Iran.
In the
name of enhancing democracy, renewed US support
can be expected for the Iraq-based anti-Tehran
Mujahideen-e Khalq organization, a socialist
opposition movement that turned against the
revolutionary Islamic government in Iran after its
influence was markedly curtailed in the new
theocratic power structure. After having first
bombed its bases inside Iraq in an effort to keep
Iran neutral during the US invasion in March 2003,
the US now sees renewed support for the
Mujahideen-e Khalq organization as a useful
bargaining chip in its dealing with Iran.
Iran also aims to resist the establishment
of permanent US military bases in Iraq, US control
of Iraq's oil wealth for anti-Iran geopolitical
purposes, and the expansion of US military
facilities in the small, rich Arab Gulf states of
Shi'ite Bahrain and Sunni Qatar to encircle Iran
through an elaborate network of security
alliances. Under such a scenario, Iran needs to
keep all the friends and allies it can find. It
provides justification for Tehran to encourage
Shi'ite forces to use their majority power in the
new Iraqi polity to ensure a pro-Iran posture
while convincing Sunni Arabs that sectarian
violence is not Iranian policy.
Wolfowitz' miscalculation Former
US deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz,
widely identified as the infamous architect of the
ill-fated US war on Iraq, put forth the view
before the invasion that Iraqis are preferable to
Saudis as US allies because Iraqis are secularists
rather than fundamentalists and "overwhelmingly
Shi'a, which is different from the fundamentalist
Sunni Wahhabis of the [Arabian] Peninsula, and
they don't bring the sensitivity of having the
holy cities of Islam being on their territory",
such as Mecca.
Wolfowitz and his fellow
neo-con policymakers misguidedly discounted the
confrontational passion of extremist Shi'ite
fundamentalist forces of the Iraqi shrine cities
of Najaf and Karbala and perilously underestimated
the havoc their militia could cause.
SCIRI - Iran's problematic ally in
Iraq Tehran has a powerful ally among Iraqi
Shi'ites, notably the Badr Brigade of the Supreme
Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), a
large, influential Shi'ite political organization
formerly based in Iran that regularly mounted
military and logistical resistance operations in
Iraq during Saddam's long rule.
Tehran has
also been heavily engaged in training and
maintaining the al-Hakim tribe and the
well-established Patriotic Union of Kurdistan
(PUK) and the Islamist Da'wa Party. Ironically, as
the SCIRI solidifies its dominance in secular
Iraqi politics, Tehran's theo-geopolitical hold on
it can be expected to slacken, because the SCIRI
will have to maintain a balance between
cross-border religious sectarian solidarity, Arab
nationalism and even pan-Arabism, a movement Iran
has no interest in supporting any more than
Israel.
Tehran's reliance on the SCIRI to
shape Iraqi politics in favor of Iran incurs the
price of enhancing Iraqi Shi'ite influence in
Iranian domestic theocratic politics and
encourages reform of Shi'ite dogma. Those
moderates in Tehran who counsel caution on
evangelistic diplomacy worry about an
uncontrollable anti-Iran backlash in Iraqi
politics resulting from domestic and
foreign-policy consequences of Iranian
manipulation of Iraq's large Shi'ite community for
narrow geopolitical ends. They seek to protect
Qom's place as the highest authority of Shi'ism by
avoiding meddling in Iraq's internal secular
affairs. The dilemma is that Qom's theology is not
separable from secular politics and its religious
orthodoxy requires Iran to interfere in internal
Iraqi secular affairs.
Iranian moderates
also hope that Saddam's fall has removed an
obstacle for Iran to normalize state-to-state
relations with the Sunni GCC states by assuring
that the Shi'ite majority in Iraqi society is not
necessarily a security threat to Sunni interests
but merely a part of the country's historical
reality. The partition of the Middle East by
Western imperialist powers imposed political
boundaries that ignored historical and existing
religious and ethnic compositions, leaving
multi-ethnic sovereign states in the region in the
post-colonial world, which Iran has no interest in
disturbing. In essence, the biggest victim of
Saddam's fall in the long run will be pan-Arabism,
a movement that is viewed by the US, Iran and
Israel as a common enemy, for different reasons.
The failure of other Arab states to come to
Saddam's aid was a strategic error that will set
back pan-Arabism for another century.
Iranian moderates and pragmatists point to
the redeployment of US troops from Saudi Arabia to
Qatar in April 2003 as evidence that Washington
has been forced to moderate hostile intentions of
targeting Iran, albeit the main reason was to
neutralize al-Qaeda grievance on US troops
stationed in Saudi Arabia, which had been used as
a justification for terrorist attacks on the US.
They further argue that encouragement should be
given to those in the US ready to include Iran in
discussions on collective security arrangements in
the vital Gulf sub-region.
Iranian
moderates argue that Tehran should maintain its
steady course of detente with the West and take
advantage of the new situation in Iraq to
underline its readiness to cooperate and enter
into deeper dialogue with the United States as
well as the European Union about the future shape
of the Gulf security framework. They see an
extended role for Iran in helping to reduce
sources of tension in the Gulf as in its national
interest, as Iran will better fulfill its natural
role as a major power in the region
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