How Iran won the U.S.-Iraq war
Over at American Footprints, new contributor Motown67 summarizes a report by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point on Iran’s actions related to the U.S. occupation of Iraq. For an institution connected to the U.S. military, the CTC is surprisingly clear-eyed in seeing the comprehensive, multiple-choice strategy Iran has followed in Iraq. As Motown67 puts it in his condensed take:
[Iran has backed] a variety of groups from the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC), to the Dawa Party to Moqtada al-Sadr to Special Groups even though they are opposed to each other. Iran supported the Americans at first as well, because the creation of a new political system was the vehicle for Iran’s allies to gain power in the new government. At the same time, Iran began reaching out to Sadr and Shiite militants.
. . . Tehran believed that elections would allow its allies to gain power. The SIIC and Dawa had already positioned themselves before the invasion as exile groups willing to work with the U.S. At the same time, Iran began a dual track policy of infiltrating thousands of Badr Brigade fighters into Iraq, supported by the Qods Force. They also had Hezbollah send some operatives to work within the country. They eliminated opponents of Iran and set up operations against the U.S.
Most crucially, the CTC notes that rather than being closely allied with Sadr (as Bushite rhetoric has falsely insisted), the Iranians used financial/military support of breakaway militants to undermine his standing in Iraq:
The fracturing of the Sadr Trend suited Iran. They disliked Sadr’s political moves because he continued to be a nationalist and anti-Iranian, and was a wild card. He could stop or start military actions when Iran didn’t want him to, which would harm Tehran’s larger political policy. The Special Groups on the other hand, were committed to fighting the occupation using violence, so Iran began moving towards them. They could be regulated by the amount of lethal aid Iran provided them.
Funding violence by former Sadrists served a double purpose — simultaneously pressuring the U.S. occupation and chipping away at Sadr’s authority, allowing SIIC and Dawa (Tehran’s longer-term allies) to reap the benefits without leaving any fingerprints. All in a good scam‘s work, you might say.
Stumble it!
Tags: iran, Iraq, Sadr, Shiites, special groups
December 14th, 2008 at 8:30 pm
Yes Iran won the war. To broaden the context, let’s look at what has not been gained that was the covert goal of invading Iraq:
US oil companies will get no privileged access to Iraqi oil. They probably could, as China just did, sign contracts to service Iraq’s oil industry, but they won’t get control or any share of the profits.
There will be no permanent US military bases in Iraq to intimidate Iraq and its neighbors and enforce profit-sharing control of any mideast oil, at a time when North and South American oil is drying up fast.
Now, the most obvious result of the invasion of Iraq:
Iran’s mortal enemy, the Baathist Sunnis led by Saddam Hussein, have been vanquished and effectively eliminated.
Iran’s blood relatives, the Shiites of Iraq, have now been installed as the unchallenged rulers of the government of Iraq in Baghdad and over most of Iraq, extending Iran’s influence exponentially.
The US military, reserves and national guard have been decimated and weakened for decades.
The US economy has been bankrupted and paralyzed.
You’d think Iran might have planned the whole adventure and sent a team of persuasive misinformation artists, say, call them the Iraqi National Congress, across Europe and the US, led by an accomplished pathological liar, like, say, Ahmed Chalabi, to play on the ignorance, arrogance and global strategies of the rulers of America, say maybe the neocons and their Program for a New American Century, to convince them they would get cheap acces to Iraqi oil and permanent military bases, and be welcomed as liberators, and to provide a package of propaganda stories, say, about WMDs, ties to bin Laden, etc., to convince the American public that invading Iraq was required and would be easy.
When will the mainstream blogosphere catch up to the this news behind the news?
December 16th, 2008 at 11:23 pm
Plus Chalabi