the opinionist

Like most viewers, I might imagine, my head was throbbing last night as I carefully weighed the key points of President Bush’s Iraq speech. When a normally supportive Brit Hume (Fox News Chief Political Editor) phrases the speech as less than ’scintillating’ you know you’re not the only one confused. To make matters worse (tough to imagine) the delivery, the content, and the souless nature of the President’s speech just didn’t help excude confidence in the Iraq war’s next plan of action. It was as if Bush tried to scrape the content of the message off his shoe courtesy of his little pet buddy, the mostly harmless Scottish Terrier, Barney.

Indeed the most thought-provoking aspect of the speech was the mention of Iran. At the very beginning of the speech the President described the cause of sectarian violence that has gripped many parts of Iraq. Iran is “allowing terrorists and insurgents to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq. Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops.“

Bush continued, “We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We’ll interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.”

Herein lies the focus of my concern and confusion. What can the U.S. military and intelligence services do to encourage Iran to refrain from or otherwise be physically forced to cease its support, arms and personnel from Iraq and the Shia insurgency / militia? I’m clearly no military expert nor that smart on many matters (and yet I try to write about them! silly me) but I for one would love to understand how the “deployment of an additional carrier strike group to the region” can improve the situation specifically against Iran and, to a lessor degree, Syria.

This morning I thought I’d do some digging online and try to better understand Iran and perhaps the reasons why it is trying - quite successfully - to impede the U.S. and (a fair chunk of) Iraqi efforts to build a viable and safe society. The U.S. needs to withdraw and Iran is working against such a plan? I’m facing a scrawled map of notes and I’m mighty confused by the sheer number of reports, rumors and innuendos surrounding Iran, its leader - President Ahmadinejad, and the influence it wields across Iraq and the Middle East.

Iranian Parliament; attempts to impeach President Ahmadinejad.

A terrific online news source - based in Italy - adn.kronos.international - provides an informative article this week entitled ‘Iran: members of parliament try to impeach Ahmadinejad.’ The article reports ‘Iranian reformist lawmakers have started collecting signatures in Parliament to demand the impeachment of the country’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. So far, 38 signatures have been collected out of the 72 required to formally summon Ahmadinejad and request his impeachment.‘

It appears the reformist members of parliament are unhappy with Ahmadinejad’s management of the Iranian economy (rampant inflation, high unemployment, the ILSA (U.S. Iran and Libya Sanctions Act), and U.N. newly imposed trade sanctions). No mention of attempts to build nuclear weapons nor meddling in neighboring Iraq as just causes for impeachment.
I’ve scoured through Google (New & Blog searches) and for the simple life of me - I cannot find any supporting information to backup this article. There are plenty (plenty!) of blogs that link to this article but none that build upon the content - which is a shame.

As a cheeky request, if anyone knows Nazila Fathi from the New York Times Tehran Bureau - perhaps they could ask about any impeachment attempts. For the life of me I’ve been unable to reach Nazila.

On the flip-side news articles do cover the student unrest in Iran, the ‘mass purges‘ in Iranian universities and discontent with the cleric regime. Radio-Free-Europe covers a terrific article titled ‘Iran: Former Officials, Reformists Criticize Government’s Nuclear Policy‘ that describes a great deal of unhappiness and discontent between reformist members of parliament over Iran’s refusal to discuss its nuclear ambitions with the IAEA - the International Atomic Energy Agency.

So what gives? Is there a reformist effort in Iran and are they in a position to encourage else elect a more moderate and willing Iranian leader? I don’t know. Do you?

The Saudi-backed Sunni against the Iranian Shia - cause for greater regional concern?

What surprised me during my self-imposed search for Iranian insights - was the scale of support for the Iraq Sunnis by Saudi Arabia which is itself governed by a very conversative version of Sunni Islam - known as Wahhabi.

In a story by News24 - a South African news agency - an Iraqi MP, Mohammad al-Daeni, during a trip to neighboring Saudi Arabia, accused Iran of openly operating inside Baghdad - rounding up and killing Sunni citizens on a daily basis. Of forming a 10,000 strong Iranian-backed militia called the ‘Brigade of Mecca’ and placing it along the Saudi border with Iraq - to intimidate and control oil interests for Iraqi Shia. The News24 report continues by suggesting Daeni also claimed that “Iranian intelligence controls all of Iraq’s governmental institutions, mainly the ministries of defence, interior, transport, health, and oil“.

And finally - with a dramatic flourish - al-Daeni describes the “Iranian occupation” of Iraq as being “more dangerous that the American occupation because it aims to establish a Persian empire starting with control over Iraq and the Gulf“.

Not to be out done by the vicious Saudi muck-raking - FARS - the official Iranian News Agency - covers a speech by a prominent member of the Iranian Parliamentarian Heshmatollah Felahat-Pisheh - that quite vigorously threatens Saudi Arabia from “sowing discord between Muslin Shiites and Sunnites and the deteriorating violence in Iraq“. The speech accuses an “anti-Iran coalition by the U.S., [Great] Britain and some regional Arab states” of “… seeking to take Iran into a critical condition.”

Could it be true that Iran really does control the Iraqi government? the Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki? U.S. Secretary of State Condi Rice was quoted today as saying “Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was running out of time to restore security in Iraq but repeated her confidence in him.” Is this based his pure inability to build a sufficiently secure Government able and willing to take-over the security and a working infrastructure from the U.S. or something else?

What is the U.S. doing meanwhile?

Late last year (end of December) the New York Times covered a story titled “U.S. is holding Iranians seized in raids in Iraq” which begins, “The American military is holding at least four Iranians in Iraq, including men the Bush administration called senior military officials, who were seized in a pair of raids late last week aimed at people suspected of conducting attacks on Iraqi security forces, according to senior Iraqi and American officials in Baghdad and Washington.”

The article continues, “American and Iraqi officials have long accused Iran of interfering in this country’s internal affairs, but have rarely produced evidence. The administration presented last week’s arrests as a potential confirmation of the link. Mr. Johndroe said, “We suspect this event validates our claims about Iranian meddling, but we want to finish our investigation of the detained Iranians before characterizing their activities.”

I’m curious but unable to discover the results of this investigation and I do so badly wish the Bush Administration would hurry up and display smoking-gun evidence against Iran. Sabre-rattling is no fun if it amounts to nothing more than tit-for-tat squabbling with hidden and quiet disasterous consequences for the U.S. military and innocent Iraqi citizens, and potentially innocent Iranian diplomats - unless proven guilty.

Almost as follow up to President Bush’s statements last night of Iranian meddling … it was reported only today that U.S. troops raided the Iran Consultate General in Iraq yesterday - arresting consultate employees - some with diplomatic status - and seizing data records. FARS coverage of the story and ADNKI’s coverage of the incident.

In conclusion

There is no doubt there are dozens, hundreds of special forces missons executed and successfully accomplished by U.S. and coalition forces across the border from Iraq into Iran. Reports and rumors are breached every few weeks. So it’s clear we’re getting only a fraction of the bigger picture - of the Iranian involvement in Iraq, of the Saudi support for the Sunnis, and of the true nature of the civil war - spiraling violence across major potions of Iraq.

What is the U.S. supposed to do to fix it? Why should Iran let us? What can an additional 21,500 U.S. troops do to possible quell such a muti-faceted disaster. Is it really ‘just’ Al Qaeda and Iranian-backed insurgence or something even more heinous and complicated? I guess we’ll have to keep watching but in the meantime I for one remain confused and concerned.

Posted on January 11th, 2007 under ADNKI, Bush, FARS, Iran, Iraq, saudi arabia •  Email This Post • RSS 2.0 feed • Leave a response, or trackback