Iran gets its hands dirty
By Safa Haeri
4.17.2004
PARIS - It took a hail of bullets into the car of Iranian envoy Khalil Naimi in Baghdad on Thursday to jeopardize Tehran's attempts to become an influential mediator in Iraq, with the strong hope of seeing itself removed from George W Bush's "axis of evil".
Press and cultural attache Naimi died instantly when the car in which he was traveling near the Iranian embassy was raked by three heavily-armed men.
Against all odds, Iran had embarked on an unlikely diplomatic mission to get the American "Satan" out of its difficulties in Iraq. A five-man Iranian foreign ministry delegation, headed by the ministry's director for Persian Gulf affairs, Hossein Sadeqi, is in Najaf to assist in the crisis over the rebel leadership of cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose Shi'ite followers have been engaged in week-long battles with US-led occupation forces.
Muqtada, whom US forces have vowed to "kill or capture", is barricaded inside Najaf, Iraq's holiest city. The US has massed more than 2,000 troops for an offensive, though both sides have said that they want to avoid bloodshed.
Now, though, Iran finds itself as yet another victim of the spiral of violence in Iraq that has seen citizens of a host of countries - ranging from Italy to Japan - either killed or kidnapped over the past weeks, and its official involvement in the country becomes problematical. It was not immediately clear whether the assassination had any direct impact on Sadeqi's plans in Iraq, although the envoy ruled out holding any talks with Muqtada after earlier hinting that this might be a possibility.
And the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers, on an unannounced visit to Baghdad, said that the last thing Iraq needed was "influence from neighboring countries trying to promote or protect their own self interest".
Sunni Muslims in Iraq, who for many years under Saddam Hussein and even before dominated the corridors of power, are known to be extremely fearful of Shi'ites - who form the majority in the country - becoming the new rulers. And they constantly warn in newspapers and at mosques of Iran interfering in Iraq and attempting to stir sectarian trouble.
In their first reaction, authorities in Tehran vehemently condemned the murder of Naimi, blaming it indirectly on the American presence in Iraq. But diplomats did not rule out a possible connection between the killing and the mediation efforts undertaken by Tehran to assess the chances of calming down Muqtada, the young and volatile cleric who has plunged American forces and their allies into their fiercest battles since their triumphant entry into Baghdad a year ago.
This was the first time that an Iranian diplomat had been assassinated in Iraq, where Iran, with its strong Shi'ite ties to the Shi'ite majority in Iraq, would think itself "immune" to such attacks.
"Those who killed our diplomat are the same that do not want to see Iraq living in peace and stand up on its feet," one Iranian diplomat in Baghdad said, while in Tehran, Hamid Reza Asefi, the Iraqi-born official spokesman of the foreign affairs ministry squarely accused the Americans, saying: "The violence and bloodshed in Iraq are the direct result of American's foolish policies in the region, making the whole world an unsafe place for humanity."
Officials in Washington confirmed that Britain had invited the Iranian delegation to help restore calm and security in Iraq, as, in the words of Mehdi Karroobi, the speaker of the majlis, or parliament, "it is obvious that Iran has strong influence in Iraq, where the people have traditional brotherly bonds with the Iranians".
An aide to Muqtada told French news agency Agence France Presse that the cleric welcomed the Iranian initiative because it came from an Islamic country. He said Muqtada was ready to meet the Iranian diplomats.
A senior State Department official said in Washington of the Iranian mediation: "They were invited by the British trying to put an end to the bloody standoff between American-led coalition forces with the Mahdi Army of Mr al-Sadr," explaining, however, that although the US went along with the British initiative, the proposal did not come from the Bush administration.
Iranian foreign affairs minister Kamal Kharrazi said in Tehran hours after the delegation left for Iraq that "naturally, there are such requests from the US and Britain that we help improve the situation in Iraq, and we are making efforts in this regard. There has been a lot of correspondence with the US about Iraq and the Swiss embassy in Tehran, which represents US diplomatic interests in the Islamic republic, played a mediating role in the recent exchanges," Kharrazi added, accusing at the same time the US of breaking its promises in Iraq and "taking a wrong path".
"When the Americans, or their most close and trusted ally, the British, call on Iran to help, this shows the influence Iran exercises in Iraq and the region, something that is not to the liking of many Arab nations and their proxies in Iraq hating the Iranians," one Iraqi diplomat told Asia Times Online.
Jean Pierre Perrin, chief of the foreign desk at the leftist French paper Liberation and a former correspondent of the French news agency AFP in Tehran, commented: "Iran's main adversary is not Washington but the two traditional enemies of the Iranian political Shi'ism: the exacerbated Arabian nationalism that carried to Iran the hardest strokes under Saddam Hussein and the imported Islam Wahhabite of Saudi Arabia that always sees in Shi'ism a 'plot of the Jewish on the one hand and the other groups that are currently engaged against the Americans in the Sunnite regions of Iraq'."
Tehran's attempts to help the US out of its troubles in Iraq (even if for self-serving reasons) have not dulled the rhetoric coming out of Tehran. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, leader of Iran, told the country's state-run, conservative-controlled television: "The United States accuses other countries of intervening in Iraq and of inciting the Iraqis, but it is very clear that the crimes of the occupation and their insulting behavior with regard to the young and the women are at the origin of the reaction of the Iraqis, Shi'ite or Sunni."
For the Supreme Leader, it is obvious that "sooner or later, the Americans will be forced to leave Iraq in shame and humiliation".
The assassination happened just hours before Sadeqi and his delegation were to leave for Najaf, from where Muqtada had earlier announced that he would obey the supreme religious authorities, and if necessary give himself up to an independent Iraqi court and dismantle his army, transforming it into a political party.
Michael Rubin, who recently resigned as an "advisor" to the US-installed Iraqi Governing Council, wrote: "The British government, with tacit US approval, has initiated discussions with the Iranian foreign ministry. A team led by top Iranian diplomat Hossein Sadeqi visited Iraq in recent days, but his talks went nowhere. The Iranian regime used Washington and London's outreach not to promote dialogue, but to humiliate the United States at a time our soldiers make sacrifices to preserve Iraq's freedom."
Leaking news of the talks on Iranian television, foreign minister Kharrazi demonstrated to his domestic audience that the US was not in control and had run to Iran for assistance. Moving in for the propaganda kill, Kharrazi stated: "The solution is for the occupiers to leave Iraq."
And Iran's repeated offer for a meeting of Iraq's neighbors to "advise" the Americans who "ignore both the situation in Iraq and the psychology of the Iraqi people", helping them "not to repeat and cumulate mistakes" there.
But at the same time, though the Iranian leaders call on Iraqis to give a lesson to the "wounded American monster", they are nevertheless worried of impending chaos in Iraq, and have avoided any direct praise for the Sunnite opposition in Fallujah, and even for Muqtada's revolt.
So while the Arab press in general glorifies Muqtada, describing him as a "hero", a "popular figure" fighting the occupation of Iraq by foreign forces, etc, the Iranian media are more cautious, observing that the young cleric is "a noise", without any religious or political legitimacy.
The Iranian daily Aftab Yazd said that the media were "wrongly" presenting the activities of Muqtada and his followers as the widespread resistance of the Iraqi people. "It is quite erroneous for our media to give implicit or open backing to people like Sadr, whose causes are not entirely known to us," it said, adding that "clearly no friend of liberty would defend the occupation in Iraq, but it is one thing to oppose occupation and another to take sides in a fight where none of the potential winners are favorably inclined toward Iran".
Columnist Ali Hamade said in the an-Nahar of Beirut, referring to the handling of Muqtada and his Mahdi Army, "The United States administration has made a major blunder in Iraq by thinking it could follow Israel's heavy-handed example against the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza without having to pay the political price."
"The Americans are on their way to doom in Iraq. In addition, the US failure in Iraq will have drastic implications on US plans for the region ... Iraq has shown that it was one thing to bring down an unpopular regime in an Arab state, but quite another to be able to rule that state. Iraq has shown that ruling post-war Iraq was the closest thing to hell for the Americans," Hamade said.
Columnist Rafik Khoury wrote in al-Anwar, another Lebanese Arabic-language daily: "Muqtada al-Sadr, the young Shi'ite militia leader, has shown that the Americans did not come to introduce democracy, but to rule Iraq and lay their hands on its vast oil resources. Washington, which came to Iraq under the pretext of liberating its people from the previous regime of Saddam Hussein, has now saddled them with a more repressive authority," he said, adding: "Meanwhile, Sadr has become the symbol of anti-American Iraqi armed resistance, and Fallujah has become the symbol of Iraqi cities being oppressed by allied force."
Commented the London-based al-Qods al-Arabi. "It was impossible for the United States to succeed in wiping out Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army because it is not an organized group, but a popular movement that expresses a religious ideology."
The paper said that US forces represented the largest power in the world, one that could defeat the Iraqi army and "perhaps the entire Arab armies united in a few days, because of the military disparities, but the US army is unable to defeat the ideas and religious ideologies in a country like Iraq".
According to this paper, capturing and killing Muqtada, as promised by the Americans, would "make him a martyr, while if he is arrested alive, he will become a symbol of resistance, just like Nelson Mandela or the late Sheikh Ahmed Yassin", the founder and spiritual leader of the Palestinian Islamic resistance movement Hamas. However, that if the US forces fail to arrest Muqtada, it will constitute "a blow to US credibility".
Meanwhile, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reports that US officials have repeatedly accused Iran of trying to meddle in Iraq's internal affairs. Iran has rejected the accusations.
On April 12, the head of US forces in the Gulf region, General John Abizaid, said that Iran and Syria had been involved in what he called "unhelpful actions" in Iraq. But he acknowledged that there are elements in Iran who are trying to limit the influence of Muqtada.
Iranian officials have distanced themselves from the cleric. On April 10, Iranian President Mohammad Khatami indirectly criticized the insurgency led by Muqtada. He said Iran "considers any policy that would intensify the crisis in Iraq and jeopardize the establishment of security to be harmful for Shi'ite and Islam".
Gary Sick is a professor of Middle East politics at New York's Columbia University and was a top White House aide for Iran during the 1979 Islamic Revolution and ensuing hostage crisis. Sick said that, despite US criticism of Tehran, Washington has been relying on Iran's assistance in Iraq.
"There have always been two strains to US policy. Just as Iran often seems to follow policies where the one part of the government seems to differ from what the other part of the government is doing, we see the same thing in the United States very much. We have, from the beginning, in fact, relied on Iran and its assistance, especially in the south and its relations with the Shi'ite, to maintain peace and order and to lend support to a more moderate perspective in Iraqi politics. At the same time, almost without stop, we have been criticizing Iran's activities in Iraq," Sick said.
Sick said the US had been maintaining indirect contacts with Iran through British officials and also through members of the Iraqi Governing Council, some of whom have made several official trips to Tehran.
"If you really want to work out cooperation on the ground, you have to do it in person. It's very difficult to send a letter and say, 'Why don't you do such-and-such', and the other side comes back and says, 'Why don't you do such-and-such'. You really need to sit down and talk to each other to do that," Sick said.
Sick said Tehran's role in Iraq cannot be ignored, given Tehran's influence among Iraq's Shi'ite and its past experiences with Baghdad. "If Iran wishes to cooperate with the United States, it's going to be helpful. If Iran decides to openly oppose the United States, that is going to be very unhelpful from the US point of view and could, in fact, be disastrous. So it seems to me that developing a working relationship - it doesn't mean that the countries have to reestablish diplomatic relations, it doesn't mean that they have to express love for each other - it basically means working together on issues that are of mutual significance. What happens in Iraq is tremendously important to Iran, and it's tremendously important to the United States," Sick said.
Iran and the United States cut diplomatic ties following the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis. Since then, the two countries have communicated through the Swiss embassy in Tehran, which represents US interests in Iran. Diplomats from the two sides have reportedly held talks in Geneva over the situations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
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http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FD17Ak03.htmlExperiencing Islam in Iran
Mennonites Wally and Evie Shellenberger talk about their three years in the Mideast
By Les Gehrett
Albany Democrat-Herald
When Wally and Evie Shellenberger traveled to Iran three years ago as part of a religious student exchange program, they had no idea of the changes that would soon take place in the world.
From the summer of 2001 until this February when they returned home, the couple had a unique view of the events involving the United States and the Muslim world. They lived during this time in Qom, Iran, a city that is a center for the study of the Shia branch of Islam.
They were there as part of a Mennonite Central Committee exchange program that brings Muslims to North America for study in a Christian setting and sends North American Christ-ians to Iran for a similar cross-cultural experience.
The couple is from southern Indiana, but has family in Albany, and they spent the past week talking to various church and school groups throughout western Oregon about their visit.
Their stay was certainly affected by world events, they said.
"To begin with, whenever people met us and realized we were from the United States, they were very excited, eager to talk about the United States," said Wally Shellenberger, a 65-year old psychiatrist.
In the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, the couple received phone calls and visits from their new acquaintances who were saddened and horrified by the events. Neighbors brought them bread and other food, and they saw coverage of rallies in Tehran where students expressed sympathy for the victims of the attacks and their families.
As time passed, they did hear the opinion expressed that because of the United States' foreign policies, such an attack was bound to happen. But they didn't see any evidence of Iranians being happy about the attack itself.
Even when the United States decided to invade neighboring Iraq the Shellenbergers say they never felt any personal hostility.
"Everywhere we went in Iran, we were treated like royalty," Wally said.
The Iranians' attitudes towards the American war on terror and the accompanying invasion of Iraq are complex.
Iran and Iraq fought a bloody war in the 1980s and the Iranians are happy that Saddam Hussein has been toppled and captured. Still, there is strong opposition to the American presence in Iraq.
"The fear is that the Americans will stay forever," Wally said.
There is also no doubt that Iran in some ways supports terrorist activities. Groups such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbellah receive funds from Iran.
At the same time, Iran is a country that is in a serious debate about its own future.
There is a conservative group of older clerics that hold much of the power, while a younger generation is seeking reform.
Already, there are signs of a loosening up in Iranian society. For example, satellite television access is illegal, but widespread and not really suppressed.
"There is change, considerable change already. Not as fast as many would like it to come," he said. "The conservatives now are not as conservative as they were 10 years ago."
One area where Iran differs a great deal from some of its Middle Eastern neighbors is in the place of women in society.
Evie Shellenberger, 62, said Iranian women fill every role imaginable in their country, in law, health care, engineering and other fields. They do not have to be accompanied by a male relative when they leave their homes, as is required of women in Saudi Arabia.
"Women drive cars, ride on motorcycles," she said.
Because it is a religious center, Qom has some of the most stringent expectations for womens' dress in Iran. But even in Qom, a woman must wear a head covering but is not required to cover her face or hands.
In other parts of Iran, women often wear their scarves so that some of their hair is showing and sometimes wear sandals without socks.
"Even in the three years we were there, we saw changes in womens' dress," said Evie, a family nurse practitioner.
The Shellenbergers think the Internet has played a large role in Iran's internal debate. Internet access is widespread and local service providers are common. Access is also fairly open, especially for basic information, while some sexual and violent materials are censored.
There is some level of free press and debate is allowed, within limits.
"Really aggressive or insulting articles could result in the paper being shut down," Wally said.
Since Sept. 11, there has been much debate over why America is a target for terrorist groups.
Based on their experiences, the Shellenbergers believe there are three basic factors.
First, some Muslims look at America, which is known to be a strongly Christian nation, and cannot believe what they see: sexual exploitation of women, widespread alcoholism, divorce and single parent families, and violence.
"To call ourselves Christian and have these problems, they don't understand," Wally said.
Second, there is disagreement with an American foreign policy that seems more interested in creating fear and intimidation than in spreading goodwill. If money that is currently spent on huge military programs was instead spent on extended education and aid, it could change some people's perceptions, they believe.
And finally, America has isolated itself by choosing to largely be on its own in Iraq.
"Arrogance is a word we heard all the time," he said. "We need everyone to work toward peace."
Despite all these obstacles, the Shellenbergers think there is still a chance to build more understanding and they are grateful for the opportunity they had to play a small role in doing this.
Evie remembered one small conversation during her time in Iran that summed up their experience. One day as they were shopping at a small fruit market, a young Iranian university student heard them speaking. The woman, who was studying English, asked the Shellenberg-ers where they were from and was surprised to learn that they hailed from the United States.
"Aren't Iranians enemies of the Americans? Why have you decided to come to live with people who are your enemies?" she asked.
Evie said they didn't think of Iranians in that way at all, an answer that brought a huge smile to her questioner's face. The woman then thanked her and welcomed them to her country.
http://www.dhonline.com/articles/2004/04/16/news/religion/religion01.txt