Eye of the Storm: Iraq Gets an Arab 'Helping Hand'
July 08, 2004
The Jerusalem Post
Amir Taheri
What are Iran and Syria up to in Iraq? Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari says they are up to no good. "They are fanning the fires," he told me in a recent conversation. "We have caught some of their agents."
Zebari's claim is backed by Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations special envoy to Iraq. He visited Teheran on Monday to ask the Khomeinist leaders to prevent "hostile elements" from crossing the border into Iraq - a diplomatic way of saying please don't send terrorists to Iraq.
Next week Brahimi will be in Damascus to deliver a similar message to the Syrians. The Iraqi government has furnished him with "ample documents" showing that Syria is the principal center of pro-Saddam agitation in Iraq.
One of Saddam's cousins, Suleyman al-Majid al-Takriti, is reportedly running a base for the so-called "resistance" across the border in Syria. The first statement of the newly created High Council of Resistance, a grouping of 16 terrorist outfits fighting the Iraqi government, was released in Damascus on Sunday.
Iran and Syria are not the only states in the neighborhood engaged in destabilizing Iraq. Egyptian and Jordanian intelligence services are conducting a campaign of disinformation to undermine the government of Prime Minister Iyad al-Allawi in Baghdad.
A recent rumor claiming that Jews were buying large tracts of land in northern Iraq has been traced to Egyptian intelligence. It was first launched in a column written by a man whose brother holds a senior post in Egyptian intelligence.
The Jordanians have done their bit by spreading rumors, followed by denials, about plans by Raghd, Saddam's eldest daughter, to set up an Iraqi government in exile in Amman.
Farther afield, satellite television channels owned by Qatari, Saudi and Emirati sheikhs often act as platforms for the terrorists working to destabilize Iraq and disrupt its planned elections.
BUT THERE is little doubt that Iran and Syria are the most active troublemakers in Iraq today. Both are happy that Saddam, their enemy for decades, is in prison. They also know that prolonged instability in Iraq could lead to the dismantling of the Iraqi state and plunge the whole region into chaos. But neither wants to see a pro-American government established in Baghdad, especially if it is the product of free elections.
"We are at war with the enemy," Iran's Supreme Guide Ali Khamenehi told a meeting of mullahs in the city of Hamadan, west of Teheran, last Monday. "The central battlefield [of this war] is Iraq."
Iran and Syria are ruled by two versions of Oriental despotism - one religious, the other secular. They see the emergence of a democratic Iraq as a challenge to their legitimacy.
The future of Iraq was at the center of talks in Teheran between Syrian President Bashar Assad and the Islamic Republic leaders last weekend. This was Assad's third state visit to Iran in four years. The Syrian leader has also visited Iran three more times for "working visits" during the same period. In comparison, his father, Hafez al-Assad, visited Iran only once, for a six-hour stopover, during his 30-year rule.
What has prompted the younger Assad to seek closer ties with Teheran is the belief that Iran and Syria are next on Washington's turkey-shoot list. Earlier this year, Iran and Syria signed a defense cooperation pact under which an attack on one would be considered an attack on the other.
"Syria is the frontline of the Islamic Republic," says Iranian Defense Minister Rear-Admiral Ali Shamkhani.
"Iran is Syria's vital hinterland," adds Syrian Vice-President Abdul-Halim Khaddam, regarded as the real strongman in Damascus.
During Assad's visit to Teheran it became clear that the two allies regard instability in Iraq as an insurance policy for them. "The Iraqi resistance is, in fact, fighting for Iran and Syria as well," says Manuchehr Badii, a Teheran analyst. "As long as Americans are busy in Iraq, they will not think of other places in the region."
That analysis is endorsed by Hashemi Rafsanjani, one of the most influential mullahs in the Iranian regime. In a recent speech in Teheran he described Iraq as a "battlefield between two visions of the world." One vision was that of "an Americanized Islam wrapped in democratic gift paper." The other was that of Khomeinist Islam, whose aim remained the ending of "American hegemony."
The current Iranian analysis is based on the hope that George W. Bush will lose the presidential election in November and that a new US administration with John Kerry as president would not be fully operational and capable of shaping a strategy for a year to 18 months. And that, of course, could give Iran and Syria ample time to exert a decisive influence on shaping the future of Iraq.
The latest Assad visit to Teheran was aimed at increasing pressure on Iraq in a crucial period of transition. The best way for the new Iraqi government to retain the initiative is to hold elections before the Americans go to the polls in November.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1089257368323&p=1006953079897
Eye of the Storm: Iraq Gets an Arab 'Helping Hand'
July 08, 2004
The Jerusalem Post
Amir Taheri
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1168644/posts?page=20#20
"As long as Americans are busy in Iraq, they will not think of other places in the region." "
LoL. Good. Let them think that.
""We are at war with the enemy," Iran's Supreme Guide Ali Khamenehi told a meeting of mullahs in the city of Hamadan, west of Teheran, last Monday. "The central battlefield [of this war] is Iraq." "
Sure sounds to me like he just announced that Iran is at war with the U.S. HELLLOOO??? ANYone Listening???