by Ray Takeyh
As Iran’s rulers look next door, there is a new Iraq. The once docile and repressed Shiite forces have now been empowered, and the once imperious Sunni Arabs stand isolated and marginalized in a country in which they dominated politics for many decades. The future of Iraq remains uncertain, but one thing that appears definite is that the ideological antagonisms that once led to tension, conflict, and ultimately war between the two states have all but evaporated. For the mullahs, America’s invasion offers enormous challenges but also a remarkable set of opportunities.
IRAN AND THE NEW IRAQ
On July 7, 2005, a momentous event took place in Tehran. Saadun al-Dulaimi, Iraq’s defense minister, arrived there and formally declared, “I have come to Iran to ask forgiveness for what Saddam Hussein has done.”30 The atmospherics of the trip reflected the changed relationship as Iranian and Iraqi officials easily intermingled, signing various cooperative and trade agreements and pledging a new dawn in their relations. In yet another paradox of the Middle East, it took a hawkish American government with its well-honed antagonism toward the Islamic Republic to finally alleviate one of Iran’s most pressing strategic quandaries.
Since the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003, the Bush administration has periodically complained about Iran’s mischievousness and intervention in Iraq’s politics.31 The question then becomes, what are Iran’s priorities and objectives in Iraq? Does Iran seek to export its revolution next door and create another Islamic Republic? Is it in Iran’s interest to intensify the prevailing insurgency and further entangle America in its bloody quagmire? Do Iran and the United States have common interests in the troubled state of Iraq?
As Iraq settles into its disturbing pattern of violence and disorder, the Islamic Republic has contending, and at times conflicting, objectives next door. The overarching priority for Tehran is to prevent Iraq from once more emerging as a military and ideological threat. As we have seen, a consensus has evolved among Iran’s officials that the cause of Iraq’s aggressive behavior was the Sunni domination of its politics. Thus, the empowerment of a more friendly Shiite regime is an essential objective of Iran’s strategy. Given the fears of a spillover from a potential civil war and the fragmentation of the country, however, Iran’s leaders also want to maintain Iraq’s territorial integrity. Finally, there is the menacing U.S. military presence in Iraq. Contrary to the notion that Iran seeks to fuel the insurgency as a means of deterring the United States from attacking its suspected nuclear facilities, Tehran appreciates that a stable Iraq is the best means of ending the American occupation. These competing aims have yielded alternative tactics, as Iran has been active in subsidizing its Shiite allies, dispatching arms to friendly militias, and agitating against the American presence.32
Since the demise of Saddam, a curious conventional wisdom is emerging as many in the Washington establishment and the Sunni elite of the Middle East ominously warn of a rising “Shiite Crescent” and how a mini-Islamic Republic is being created in at least the southern part of Iraq. King Abdullah of Jordan has taken the lead in warning his Western counterparts of such dire developments, exclaiming, “If Iraq goes to the Islamic Republic, then we have to open ourselves to a whole set of new problems that will not be limited to our borders.”33 The monarch’s alarmism was echoed by Saudi foreign minister Saud al-Faisal: “We fought a war together to keep Iran from occupying Iraq after Iraq was driven out of Kuwait. Now we are handing the whole country over to Iran without reason.”34 The region’s beleaguered Sunni princes and presidents, nurturing their own conspiracy theories, sense Iranian machinations and intrigue behind all that is transpiring in war-torn Iraq. But the question remains: What type of relationship does Iran have with Iraq’s Shiite community? After all, given that many Shiite leaders in today’s Iraq spent decades in exile in Iran, is it unthinkable that a client Iranian state can be established in a critical segment of Iraq?
Although Iraq’s Shiite political society is hardly homogeneous, the two parties that have emerged as the best organized and most competitive in the electoral process are the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and the al-Dawa Party. Both parties have intimate relations with Tehran and allied themselves with the Islamic Republic during the Iran-Iraq war. SCIRI was essentially created by Iran, and its militia, the Badr Brigade, was trained and equipped by the Revolutionary Guards. For its part, al-Dawa is Iraq’s longest-surviving Shiite political party, with a courageous record of resisting Saddam’s repression. Under tremendous pressure, al-Dawa took refuge in Iran, but it also established a presence in Syria, Lebanon, and eventually Britain. Despite their long-lasting ties with the Islamic Republic, however, both parties appreciate that in order to remain influential actors in post-Saddam Iraq they must place some distance between themselves and Tehran. The members of SCIRI and al-Dawa insist that they have no interest in emulating Iran’s theocratic model, and that Iraq’s divisions and fragmentations mandate a different governing structure. As former prime minister Ibrahim al-Jafari, the head of the al-Dawa Party, insists, “Not all the Shiites are Islamists and not all Islamists believe in velayat-e faqih. Cloning any experience is inconsistent with the human rights of that country.”35 In a similar vein, Adel Abdul Mahdi, the leading figure within SCIRI, emphasized, “We don’t want either a Shiite government or an Islamic government.36 Their persistent electoral triumphs reflect not just superior organization but a successful assertion of their own identity. Still, al-Dawa and SCIRI retain close bonds with Iran, and have defended the Islamic Republic against American charges of interference and infiltration. In the end, although both parties have no inclination to act as Iran’s surrogates, they are likely to provide Tehran with a sympathetic audience and an alliance that, like all such arrangements, will not be free of tension and difficulty.
Although less well publicized by Tehran, it appears that Iran has established tacit ties with the radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and has even supplied his Mahdi army. Unlike Iran’s relations with SCIRI and al-Dawa, the Islamic Republic’s ties to Sadr are more opportunistic, since they find his sporadic Arab nationalist rhetoric and erratic behavior problematic. Nonetheless, given his emerging power base, his strident opposition to the American occupation, and his well-organized militia group, Tehran has found it advantageous to maintain some links with Sadr. Among the characteristics of Iran’s foreign policy is to leave as many options open as possible. At a time when Sadr is being granted an audience by the Arab leaders and dignitaries across the region, it would be astonishing if Iran did not seek some kind of relationship with the Shiite firebrand.
Finally, there is Iran’s relationship with Iraq’s most esteemed and influential Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. The Grand Ayatollah stands with traditional Shiite mullahs in rejecting Khomeini’s notion that proper Islamic governance mandates direct clerical assumption of power. As we have seen, Khomeini’s innovation contravened normative Shiite political traditions, making its export problematic, if not impossible. Thus far both parties have been courteous and deferential to each other, with Sistani refusing to criticize Iran and Tehran generous in crediting him for the Shiite populace’s increasing empowerment. Rafsanjani made a point of emphasizing Sistani’s role after the elections of the interim government, noting, “The fact that the people of Iraq have gone to the ballet box to decide their own fate is the result of efforts by the Iraqi clergy and sources of emulation, led by Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.”37 For his part, Sistani maintains close ties to Iran’s clerical community and routinely meets with visiting Iranian officials—a privilege not yet granted to U.S. representatives. Moreover, even though Sistani has not pressed for a theocracy, he still insists that religion must inform political and social arrangements. Once more Iran’s reigning clerics have forged correct relations with the Grand Ayatollah and harbor no illusions that he would serve as an agent for imposition of their theocratic template on Iraq.
The professions of the region’s Sunni elite notwithstandin
g, as the clerical regime plots its strategy toward Iraq it is not inordinately interested in exporting its failed governing model to an unwilling Shiite population. The opposition of the senior Iraqi clerical class and Shiite politicians has convinced Iranian officialdom that its policy next door should be guided by practical concerns as opposed to grand ideological missions. An influential Iranian politician, Muhammad Javad Larijani, plainly commented, “Iran’s experience is not possible to be duplicated in Iraq.”38 Ali Akbar Velayati, now serving as a senior adviser to Khamenei, also agreed that the type of government that emerges in Iraq “is something for the Iraqi people to decide.”39 In a similar vein, Iran’s leading newspaper, Sharq, stressed, “Even if Iraq’s prime minister is an Islamic figure who lived in Iran for many years and fought against Saddam’s regime shoulder to shoulder with the Iranian government, one cannot expect that he will implement the Iranian model of government in Iraq.”40 As such, Tehran’s promotion of its Shiite allies is a way of ensuring that a future Iraqi government features voices who are willing to engage with Iran. The clerical rulers have no delusions about the Iraqi Shiite community subordinating its communal interests to Iran’s prerogatives; they merely hope that promotion of Shiite parties will provide them with a suitable interlocutor. Iran’s policy toward Iraq, as elsewhere in the Gulf, is predicated on carefully calibrated calculations of national interest, as opposed to a messianic mission of advancing the revolution.
Today the essential estrangement of the Iraqi Shiites from the larger Arab world, and the neighboring Sunni regimes’ unease with their empowerment, makes the community more attractive to Iran. The ascendance of the Shiites may be acceptable to the Bush administration with its democratic imperatives, but the Sunni monarchs of Saudi Arabia and Jordan and the presidential dictatorships of Egypt and Syria are extremely anxious about the emergence of a new “Shiite Crescent.” At a time when the leading pan-Arab newspapers routinely decry the invasion of Iraq as a U.S.–Iranian plot to undermine the cohesion of the Sunni bloc, the prospects of an elected Shiite government in Iraq being warmly embraced by the Arab world seems remote. Iraq’s new Shiite parties, conservative or moderate, are drawn to Iran as they look for natural allies. It is unlikely that this will change because the political alignments of the Middle East are increasingly being defined by sectarian identities.
Although it is customary to speak of Iran’s ties to the Shiites, the Islamic Republic has also sought to cultivate relations with the Kurdish parties, particularly Jalal Talabani’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. As noted, the history of Iran’s relations with the Kurdish population is contentious; the Shah mercilessly exploited the Kurds and then cast them aside when they proved inconvenient. Soon after assuming power, the Islamic Republic confronted Kurdish separatism, and one of its first challenges was the suppression of a determined Kurdish rebellion. However, during their long years of common struggle against Saddam, the two sides often cooperated with each other, and eventually came to establish relatively reasonable relations. For the past two decades, Iran not only sustained those ties but often housed substantial numbers of Kurdish refugees whenever they had to flee Saddam’s war machine. Today, Iran’s relations with Talabani are cordial and correct, as Tehran hopes that a degree of autonomy will persuade the Kurds to remain within a unitary Iraqi state.
The intriguing aspect of Iran’s approach toward Iraq is the extent that it is conditioned by its wartime experiences as opposed to Islamic fervor. Iraq is a land of sectarian division, ethnic cleavages, and contending foreign policy orientations. As we have seen, the Sunni minority sought to sanction its authority under the Ba’athist regime by embracing a pan-Arabist enterprise and employing an aggressive transnational ideology as the foundation of its legitimacy. The Shiites and the Kurds also possess foreign policy goals, but these are more inclined toward improving relations with Iraq’s non-Arab neighbors. In that sense there has always been a coincidence of interests among Iran’s Persians and Iraq’s Shiites and Kurds, as they have all harbored intense suspicions of the dominant Sunni class. As an important editorial in Sharq emphasized, “The great enmity between the two powers was not just the consequence of the eight-year war, but the nature of the ideology of the two in the course of the past quarter-century.”41 Indeed, that ideological antipathy has evaporated, as Iraq will no longer serve as an instrument of a Sunni elite with its revisionist schemes and preoccupations with inter-Arab intrigues.
Contrary to Washington’s presumptions, the realization of Iran’s objectives is not predicated on violence and the insurgency but on the unfolding democratic process. In a strange paradox, the Iranian clerical hard-liners, who have been so adamant about suppressing the reform movement, have emerged as forceful advocates of democratic pluralism in Iraq. Indeed, a democratic Iraq offers Iran political and strategic advantages. After much deliberation, Iran’s theocrats have arrived at the conclusion that the best means of advancing their interests is to support an electoral process dedicated to constructing a state with strong provinces and a weak federal structure. Such an arrangement would empower the more congenial Shiite populace, contain the unruly ambitions of the Kurds, and marginalize Iran’s Sunni foes.
Moreover, Iran’s stratagem is not devoid of realpolitik considerations. A pluralistic Iraq is bound to be a fractious, divided state too preoccupied with its internal squabbles to contest Iran’s aspirations in the Gulf. At a time when Iraq’s constitutional arrangements are ceding essential authority to the provinces and favoring local militias over national armed forces, it is unlikely that Iraq will once more emerge as a powerful, centralized state seeking to dominate the Persian Gulf region, if not the entire Middle East. It would be much easier for Iran to exert influence over a decentralized state with many contending actors than over a strong, cohesive regime.
For Iran, however, Iraq remains a series of balancing acts. Tehran fears that the insurgency and even the democratic process itself may lead to the fragmentation of Iraq into three independent and unstable entities. Iran is an intact, ancient nation whose boundaries do not suffer from the artificiality of its Arab neighbors. Even so, Iran possesses a restless Kurdish population concentrated in the northeastern Azerbaijan province that may make common cause with a prospective Iraqi Kurdish state and agitate for autonomy. In its frequent contacts with the Iraqi Kurds, Iran has acknowledged their prerogatives and their sufferings under Saddam while nudging them toward continued membership in a confederated Iraqi state. Iran’s speaker of the parliament, Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel, stressed this point in February 2005: “Iran’s permanent policy is to defend Iraq’s territorial integrity.”42 Thus far, this delicate diplomacy seems to have succeeded, for despite their assertiveness the Kurds do not display a desire to leave Iraq altogether and set up a completely autonomous state. Since the U.S. invasion, Iran has persistently called on the Shiites and the Kurds to remain within a unitary state and establish elected institutions that can diminish the potency of the Sunni insurgency by granting that beleaguered populace an alternative channel for asserting its claims. Again, Iran’s actual conduct contradicts the claims of those Arab dignitaries who charge that the Islamic Republic is seeking to fracture Iraq and establish a Shiite theocracy in the south. A more strategically minded Iran would prefer the Iraqi state to remain intact, although weakened and divided against itself. And the best manner of achieving this objective is to continue to press for democracy and pluralism.
Given Iran’s interest in the stability and success of a Shiite-dominated Iraq, how does one account for the credible reports indicating that Tehran has been infiltrating men and supplies into Iraq? To be sure, since the removal of Saddam, the Islamic Republic has been busy establishing an infrastructure of influence next door that includes funding political parties and dispatching arms to Shiite militias. For the United States, with its perennial suspicions of Iran, such activism necessarily implies a propensity toward mischief and terror. Iran’s presence in Iraq, however, can best be seen within the context of
its tense relations with the United States, if not the larger international community. Such influence and presence provides Iran with important leverage in dealing with the Western powers. The fact that America and its allies may believe that Iran will retaliate in Iraq for any military strikes against its nuclear facilities implicitly strengthens Tehran’s deterrence against such a move. At a time when Iran’s nuclear ambitions are at issue, it is not in the theocracy’s interest to unduly disabuse the United States of that impression.
Should the Islamic Republic’s implied deterrence fail and the United States does strike its nuclear installations, then Iran’s extensive presence in Iraq will give it a credible retaliatory capacity. Yahya Rahim Safavi, commander of the Revolutionary Guards, has plainly outlined Iran’s options: “The Americans know well that their military centers in Afghanistan, the Gulf of Oman, the Persian Gulf, and Iraq will come under threat and they may be vulnerable because they are in Iran’s neighborhood.”43 The fact remains that Iran’s network in Iraq is not necessarily designed for attacks against America, though it does offer the theocracy a variety of choices should its relations with the United States significantly deteriorate.