As US Power Fades, it Can't Find Friends to Take on Iran

[babylonsister]

http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0202-20.htm

As US Power Fades, it Can't Find Friends to Take on Iran
Washington has exaggerated Tehran's capabilities and intentions in Iraq. It is confused and frustrated
by Jonathan Steele

The shadowy outlines of a new US strategy towards Iran are exercising diplomats and experts around the Middle East and in the west. The US says Iranian personnel are training and arming anti-US forces inside Iraq, and it will not hesitate to kill them. It is sending a second aircraft carrier to the Gulf, doubling its force projection there. It is calling on Europeans to tighten sanctions on Iran until Tehran suspends its uranium enrichment programme.

Is the US rattling the sabre in advance of an attack on Iran? Or is it merely rattling its cage, as it pretends still to be a power in the region in spite of being locked into an unwinnable war in Iraq? The only certainty is that Bush's strategy of calling for democratisation in the Middle East is over. Washington has had to abandon the neocon dream of turning Iraq into a beacon of secular liberal democracy. It is no longer pressing for reform in other Arab states.

On her recent trip to Egypt, Jordan, and the Gulf, Condoleezza Rice said little about democracy. Her pitch was old-fashioned realpolitik as she tried to create a regional counterweight to Iran's influence. Gary Sick, a former National Security Council expert, argues that Washington's return to balance-of-power considerations is designed to create an informal anti-Iranian alliance of the US, Israel and the Sunni Arab states. The aim is partly to divert attention from the catastrophe of Iraq. It also reduces Israel's isolation by suggesting Sunni Arab states have a common interest in confronting Iran, whatever their disagreements over Palestine.

Other American experts argue that Iranian influence should not be confused with Shia influence. The US blunder in invading Iraq and opening the way for Shia Islamists to control its government created an unexpected opportunity for Iran. But it does not follow that Shia movements in other Arab states have grown stronger or that the arc of Shia radicalism that King Abdullah of Jordan has talked of is anything more than a figment of his imagination. The Shia minorities in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are showing no signs of revolt. On the contrary, Saudi Shias are reported to be fearful of a backlash from the Sunni majority if sectarian threat-mongering continues. Highlighting sectarian identities has turned into a galloping cancer in Iraq, and it would be a disaster if the US seeks to export these tensions into the wider Middle East.

Even in Iraq there are limits to Iran's role. The eight-year war between the two countries in the 1980s showed that Iraqi Shias put their Arab and Iraqi identity above the religious rituals they share with Iranians. Moqtada al-Sadr, the cleric who commands one of the main Iraqi militias, frequently boasts of his Iraqi nationalism and the fact that his father, a distinguished ayatollah, remained in opposition in Iraq during the Saddam Hussein years rather than fleeing, as other Iraqi Shia clerics did, to the protection of Tehran or London.

The US claims Iran has increased its subversion in Iraq in recent months. The US has a record of self-serving and false intelligence on Iraq but, even if true, Iran's actions cannot make much difference to the problems the US is facing. The sectarian violence is perpetrated largely by Iraqis on Iraqis. If outsiders provoke it, they are mainly Sunni jihadis loyal to al-Qaida. As for attacks on US forces, these come primarily in Sunni areas or the mixed province of Diyala. Some US officials now hint that Iranians may be involved in these areas too. Links between Iran and Iraq's Sunni insurgents would be new, but marginal.

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[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. We lost our moral authority

with the illegal invasion of Iraq. Bush has ruined our military, so we have lost any authority that comes from military clout. It is just a matter of time before no one in the world will have anything to do with us.

[bdamomma]

2. Like Barbara Boxer said We are all alone, and that is no joke

* can eat shit, with his YOU'RE WITH US OR AGAINST US, when have anyone of us heard a American President ever say such a stupid thing. * has got to go. I remember someone saying to me, when Bush stole the presidency in 2004 in 4 years you will not recognize the US, he was right.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

4. no, we pissed on it, shat on it, and fucking destroyed it.

mission accomplished, George. I don't know quite how to thank you for the mess you got us into.

you are absolutely right. it is only a matter of time.

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. One interesting point, worth thinking about here

The real purpose of Washington's heightened talk of Iranian subversion seems to be twofold. The administration is playing the blame game. When the "who lost Iraq?" debate develops in earnest as the presidential election contest hots up, Bush's people will name its fall guys. Number one will be the Democrats, for failing to fund the war adequately and allowing the "enemy" to take comfort from the sapping of American will. Number two will be Iran for its alleged arming of militias and insurgents. Number three will be Syria for allowing suicide bombers through Damascus airport and into Iraq.

Republicans may try to use both number one and number two against the Democrats - number 2 by saying "we could have suppressed Iran if we'd been allowed to attack it". So Republican propaganda against Iran needs to be countered, even if we don't think Bush will really try to attack it. He can't be allowed to claim "my hands were tied, and I could have prevented problems in Iraq if they hadn't been".