Commentary: Iraq ripe for Iranian [militant Shia Muslim] domination

Richard Beeston, Foreign Editor of The Times Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was right to look smug at the end of his two-day state visit to Iraq. Not only did he become the first Iranian president to visit Baghdad, but he also took a big step towards achieving the victory that had eluded Ayatollah Khomeini, the father of the Iranian revolution.

This is part of the reason we need those 58 US military bases in Iraq. With the US military there, Iran doesn’t have a chance of dominating Iraq, even if they are both mainly Shiia.

That’s why we can’t let the Iraqi government reject the SOFA. We must use all our influence to gain their agreement.

Bullpap. The Iraqi Shia are Arabs who have no great love for the Iranians, and the Shia council (the Hawza) has consistently rejected Khomeinism as a grave theological error.

Even if the Iraqi Shia wanted the Iranians in, does anyone think the Sunni and Kurds will twiddle their thumbs and do nothing?

Funniest thing I've read from the Times in awhile. Sheer wishful thinking, a desperate attempt to cling to their failed narrative of the war.

In simple point of fact, Iraq is negotiating from strength. Its economy is taking off, its oil industry has surpassed its top production under Saddam, its security is increasingly in its own hands. Iran, on the other hand, has a failing economy with a serious inflation issue, an oil industry that cannot fill automobile tanks in Tehran, and a President whose tenure is highly suspect and whose popularity both with the Iranian people and his bosses in Qom, declining.

What Iran has to offer is violence, period. That is its principal export industry. Were the Times not trapped in its own quagmire of assumption about the war its editors might be able to see the reality here. The only thing Iran has "won" is its ability to threaten, to boast, to subvert. And that it always had.

In truth, Iran's ability to project power through its puppet al Sadr and his Mahdi Army is declining, not waning. The Iraqis have had enough of demagogues, terrorists, and Iranian tools. Iraq is not about to become a satellite of idiots who can't even run their own country.

Funniest thing I've read from the Times in awhile. Sheer wishful thinking, a desperate attempt to cling to their failed narrative of the war.

'Zactly.

The cries of desperation from the media will grow more pathetic as victory in Iraq becomes more evident and inevitable.

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