The infor out of Iraq just gets more and more confused.
The Iraq Doomsday Report
By Pat Dollard on terror
Tehran
According to local press reports verified by a confidential military source in Iraq, the real story behind Muqtada Al Sadr's order for the Mahdi Army to "suspend" its attacks, and his stated goal of "reorganizing" it, is that he is attempting to purge it of Iranian-backed agents who now control huge chunks of the organization. Much like the Sunnis found out that their ally Al Qaeda was no more than a nefarious invader looking to wrest control of their territory, Al Sadr is discovering that his ally Iran is engaged in doing the same thing to him.
From the Iraqi paper Al Hayat; "Foreign factions" have infiltrated the leadership of radical Iraqi Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army in an attempt to expand their control in Iraq, according to unnamed sources within the movement. The factions reportedly provide monetary support, moral support, weapons and training. The infiltrated elements no longer obey al-Sadr's commands and instead targeted Shia and Sunnis without coordination with the al-Sadr movement." And: "Iranian-backed leaders of Iraqi Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army are pressuring al-Sadr to not continue with its restructuring to remove "offenders" from the ranks, Al Hayat reported Sept. 5, citing a Mehdi Army anonymous source. Al-Sadr wants to keep the members who were loyal to him during the first and second An Najaf battles and did not misuse their positions."
Iraq's Sunni and Shiite strongmen are learning the hard way that the only foreign force that has their best interests in mind is the United States of America.
As the Iraqi Shiites further discover that Iran is looking to rule them, not help them, they will turn on them, and we will begin to see the final chapter of the pacification of Iraq unfold. Unless of course, the Democrats and US media have their way.
What has mostly been unfolding in Iraq is a war between the United States and Iran, and we would be winning it if not for the Democrat-controlled Congress and the leftist media. As Congress and the media remain entirely self-absorbed, viewing the war in Iraq as having no consequence beyond its impact on domestic politics, the darkest and deadliest winds since the rise of Nazi Germany and the advent of World War Two are gaining momentum, and unspeakable bloodshed and horror are about to follow. And follow our betrayed troops home.
The Doomsday Report from Stratfor:
Over the past few weeks, we have spent a great deal of time analyzing how the U.S. policy debate over Iraq is shaping up in Washington. With less than two weeks to go before top U.S. commander in Iraq Gen. David Petraeus testifies before Congress, President George W. Bush is fighting a losing battle on Capitol Hill to defend the administration's war report card. One way or another, the bulk of U.S. troops will be leaving Iraq, and the perception abroad — and quite possibly at home — will be that the United States has failed in its mission.
Approximately 6,400 miles away in Iran, policymakers are busy making plans of their own for a post-withdrawal scenario in Iraq. One man driving major decisions in Tehran is Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who received a hefty promotion on Tuesday that made him one of the most influential leaders in the history of the Islamic Republic. As the newly elected chairman of the Assembly of Experts (AoE) and the current chairman of the Expediency Council — which oversees the executive, judicial and legislative branches of the government — Rafsanjani is juggling enough job titles at the apex of the political system for him to take the fast lane to securing the coveted position of supreme leader.
U.S.-Iranian negotiations were only feasible so long as Iran felt that the United States had not played all its cards. With the imminent Petraeus report likely to result in Washington sounding the call for retreat, the last card has already been swept away. Newly elected Rafsanjani has warned his colleagues to beware of the American "wounded tiger" and not be too brazen in their battle against the United States over Iraq. But the brutal truth is that the tiger has been pinned down in Iraq, and a huge power vacuum is opening up for the Iranians to fill.
A historical opportunity has been presented to the Iranians, and Rafsanjani — as much as any hard-line Iranian politician — understands all too well that the fate of Iran's national security lies across its western border. The eight-year Iran-Iraq war built a hardened resolve into the Iranian political and military leadership that is unmatched in most parts of the world, as well as a tolerance of extraordinarily high casualty rates in pursuit of Tehran's goals.
Now, Iran's mission is consolidating Shiite dominance of Iraq via the country's fractious Shiite community (which is easier said than done) and forcibly suppressing its Sunni Arab rivals in Iraq in what will likely turn out to be an extremely bloody affair — albeit one the Iranians are likely to relish. Besides Iraq's Sunni community, the entity that is most threatened by this agenda is Saudi Arabia, which will have little choice but to throw vast amounts of petrodollars into building up a robust Sunni guerrilla force in coordination with the United States.
But the Iranians know that the demographic balance of the Persian Gulf tilts in favor of the Shia, and that the combined size of their military, the array of Shiite death squads at their disposal and their war-hardened resolve can outstrip a foreign-backed insurgency.
There are two other historical facts on Iran's side. The first is that insurgencies — regardless of foreign backing — almost never turn the tide of war. The American Revolution succeeded due to the French navy and the ability of U.S. forces to fight as regular troops. The Algerian resistance was successful because of a change in politics in Paris. The Soviet-Afghan war ended with a Soviet withdrawal because the Soviet Union collapsed, not because of Stinger-armed mujahideen. Insurgents can inflict pain and certainly delay the inevitable, but they cannot impose a military reality by themselves. That requires something more akin to a tank division, and in the case of Iraq, that tank division will take orders from Tehran.
Making matters worse (for the Iraqis), Tehran is highly unlikely to follow the example of U.S. counterinsurgency efforts. As such, in the eyes of Sunnis, Tehran threatens to follow the example of the Nazis or, well, the Persians of ages past and simply wipe out populations that harbor insurgents via annihilative occupation. The threat alone, or an example being made, may be sufficient to pacify them. But Iran will do what is necessary to ensure that pacification. It is one thing for an insurgent to risk his life for a cause; it is quite another to risk the lives of everyone in his extended family. While morally brutal, the strategy delivers a pacified population in short order, and the Sunnis of Iraq — whose culture created Saddam Hussein, the very man responsible for the war that claimed more than 1 million Iranian lives — are a population that Tehran very much wants to "pacify."
This is why the newly appointed commander of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) emphasized in his first press conference Sept. 3 his plan to switch the focus of the Iranian armed forces from conventional military tactics to irregular combat readiness. A hard-line veteran of the Iraq war, IRGC chief Brig. Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari said irregular combat strategy is "part of the precious experience we gained in the course of the Iraqi-imposed defensive war," and that Iran is ready to respond to all possible threats from its enemies.
Translation: Bring it on. |
