Kevin Sullivan

Not So Sure

Posted by Kevin Sullivan under Uncategorized

Captain Ed is confident that Nouri al-Maliki has shaken his Iranian masters:

Standing up to Iran is the next step. Maliki himself appeared too close to Iran in the early days of his tenure, making Sunnis and Kurds especially suspicious of the former Dawa leader. With Sadr on the run, he needs to show now that he will not tolerate Iran propping up any militias in Iraq, and he has that opportunity now. Iran may be in a position where they will have to listen; Sadr has turned into a major disappointment, and all of the Iranian interference has not kept the green Iraqi Army from destroying the inept Mahdis in straight-up military battles.

If the US wanted an ally in the region with the strength to stand up to Iran, the Iraqi mission could be heading for success. Maliki needs to crush the Mahdis to completely secure Iraq internally, and then needs to push the Iranians out of the south altogether and secure Iraq’s borders. Reconciliation appears to be within his grasp, and Iran may find themselves with a much stronger Iraq on their border than they anticipated even a few months earlier.

With all due respect to Ed, I think this is a misunderstanding of the situation as it stands today.  The other possibility here is that there’s now more cohesion than ever between Baghdad and Tehran.  We now know that the ISCI/Badr faction may be handling conscription in Iraq, essentially consolidating and nationalizing the country’s military (Iran ties or not, I believe this to be a positive move).  There needs to be one force, one voice and one nation in Iraq.  All of that is understood.

But I think that’s the case Maliki is making to the Iranians.  I am not an Iranian chaos theory kind of guy, and I have often said that their interests are in fact parallel to our own in Iraq (to a point).  The Iranians have no reason to be invested in the Mahdi Army.  The Mahdi militia, contrary to popular belief, isn’t a sectarian organization bent on violence.  They are nationalists, and they have their own internal disagreements. 

Iran is most certainly invested, however, in al-Sadr.  He’s more valuable to them as a figurehead than he is a warlord, which is why he’s spending his days in Qom.  I’ve said this numerous times: The Iranians have a better long-term strategy for Iraq than we do, and that’s why they’re winning.