On 11/16/06, Marvin Gandall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Iran's policy is one factor and US public and congressional opinion is
another but it's long seemed to me that the fate of the US occupation has
depended most on Moktada al-Sadr, the pivotal figure in Iraq, whose Mahdi
Army holds the balance of power. The Sadrist movement expanded greatly after
the battle of Najaf in 2004, and if the Mahdi Army, probably the country's
most powerful militia, had also engaged in systematic urban guerrilla
warfare against US forces, American casualties would be far greater and the
equivocation in US ruling circles about a pullout would be correspondingly
much less pronounced than they are today.
Sadr has denounced the occupation and called for the Americans to leave and
is among the least sectarian of Iraq's politicians but his failure to take
military action is almost certainly because he shares the widespread fear
about the uncertain consequences an American withdrawal - not only as
regards the growing sectarian conflict between the Shias and Sunnis, but
also at it would affect what seems destined to be an inevitable showdown
between his own forces and the SCIRI for leadership of the Shia community.
This complex jockeying for power in Iraq has led al-Sadr into the client
Iraqi government to the point, as the NYT story below notes, that "he and
his top lieutenants are firmly part of the establishment". It would explain
his restraint, detailed below, to strike against both the US forces and the
Sunni insurgents, resulting in the disaffection of growing numbers of his
local commanders and followers in the streets of Baghdad and other centres.
I think it's wrong to suggest, as Yoshie does, that the Iranian position
reflects only the views of the liberal Khatami opposition. I think it's
clear from the article which Louis posted that the governing Ahmadinejad
faction is also taking into account the ambigious response of the two
leading pro-Iranian groups to the US occupation as well as Iran's own
strategic interests. US military and political leaders, meanwhile, continue
to be divided between a dwindling minority who say a precondition for a US
withdrawal requires smashing the Sadrist militia - an impossible task - and
a majority which favours coopting the movement but worries about the
extension of Iranian influence which would accompany the political
ascendency of "Iraq's Hezbollah".
That's the basis for a potential political settlement. The US is looking to
Iran (and Syria) for assurances they can head off a civil war between the
Sunnis and the Shias and that a Shia-dominated Iraq will be unaligned and
still willing to do business with the US after the occupation - in effect, a
"Northern Ireland" solution. The Iranians (and Syrians) also have an
interest in avoiding a civil war and the resulting regional turmoil and in
strengthening their own influence and the resumption of foreign investment
in their economies.
Moktada al-Sadr and the Mahdi Army, the most promising among the
existing political factions in Iraq, _can_ eventually grow into a
pivotal force to keep Iraq more or less unified and lead it to
independence, but it seems to me that it has not yet achieved the
leadership of all Shi'i communities, let alone the rest of Iraqis. No
single force is in hegemony in Iraq.
Washington -- or rather the James Baker faction of the power elite --
clearly overestimates Tehran's and Damascus's influences on the
political direction of Iraqis, imho. It is probably good for both
Iranians and Syrians, however, that the Baker faction overestimates
their influences in Iraq, for that will restrain Washington from
escalating its Iran and Syria campaigns.
As for Ahmadinejad's faction, it won't mind normalizing relations with
the US, provided that it doesn't have to do so at too high costs,
e.g., giving up nuclear energy development, abandoning Hizballah,
normalizing relations with Israel, signing onto an economic program
modelled on the Washington Consensus, etc. That's the difference.
The questions now are whether a new relation between Iran and the USA
will emerge (which is far from clear, given that such a new relation
entails downgrading the US-Israel relation) and, if it does, whether a
new relation will be based on Iran's or America's terms, and, if the
former, on which Iranain faction's terms.
--
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>
<http://mrzine.org>
<http://monthlyreview.org/>
