Deal with the Devil?
And/Or
The worm turns?
For dot-connectors only. ;o}}}}}}]
Iran starts to see benefit of deal with the devil
BORZOU DARAGAHI IN SALAHUDDIN, NORTHERN IRAQ
news.scotsman.com
IN PUBLIC, the Islamic Republic of Iran has scowled at the United States’ apparent plans to overthrow the Iraqi president, Saddam Hussein.
However, a delegation of Iraqi Kurds who travelled to Iran over the past couple of weeks found that even Iran’s most traditionally anti-US institutions have accepted and acceded to the possibility of a regime change in Baghdad.
Indeed, they appeared to relish the prospect of an end to President Saddam, who initiated a devastating eight-year war with Iran in 1980.
"The Iranians have some concerns about the post-Saddam Iraq, what kind of Iraq there would be, and the legality of removing a sovereign regime," said Hosyar Zebari, a top-level Kurdish official.
His delegation held meetings last week with the powerful former president, Hashemi Rafsanjani, as well as the head of Iran’s ultra-conservative Revolutionary Guards and the ministers of defence and intelligence. "But deep down they really they want a change a of regime in Iraq. They want to see the back of Saddam Hussein," Mr Zebari said.
US troop deployments and President George Bush’s vows to replace President Saddam’s government have placed the region on edge.
Governments and political groups in the region have been in a flurry of diplomatic haggling and military planning. Here in northern Iraq - a semiautonomous US and United Nations protected area - fears of war and instability loom especially large.
The mountain-top town of Salahuddin, just north of the major city of Erbil, is where Massoud Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party, one of the two major groups governing Iraqi Kurdistan, has been busy preparing for a 4 October parliamentary meeting and wrestling with the implications of a post-Saddam Iraq.
The Kurds were once fierce guerrillas. But they have lately laid down their arms, put on suits and ties and engaged in politics to ease their neighbours’ fears about a new Iraqi government. Relations between Turkey, and the two Kurdish political camps governing northern Iraq nearly collapsed after two members of the Ankara government publicly suggested annexing this part of Iraq. Mr Zebari says he is heading to Turkey next. "We’re trying cool to the atmosphere and tone done the media threats."
Mr Bush’s 12 September speech at the United Nations, in which he referred four times to the Iranians as victims of President Saddam, did much to ease Iranian fears that US plans to attack Iran following an elimination of the Baghdad regime, Mr Zebari said. Iran leaders welcomed Mr Bush’s remarks as a conciliatory gesture, he added.
Iran’s approval or at least acquiescence in an overthrow of the Iraqi regime is vital. The Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, is due in Iran to discuss the Iraqi question in the second week in October. In a telephone conversation with the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, last week, Iran’s president, Mohammad Khatami, said any action against the Iraq must be carried out under the UN flag.
Iran and the United States cut ties following the 1979 seizure of the US embassy in Tehran. But the clerical regime of Iran is also no friend of the Baghdad government, which used chemical weapons against its soldiers at the end of a long war in the 1980s. Iran quietly sat out the 1991 US-led campaign to push Iraq out of Kuwait.
But its border and ethnic ties with Afghans have complicated the US drive to create a post-Taleban peace in Afghanistan. In the same way Iran can throw spanners in any plan to create a new Iraq. Iran’s 1,200-mile frontier with Iraq is the longest of any country bordering Iraq. In contrast to other countries surrounding Iraq, Iran has poor relations with Baghdad but strong ties to President Saddam’s domestic enemies.
Some 90 per cent of Iranians follow the Shiite Muslim sect, giving them strong ties to Iraq’s Shiites, who make up 60 per cent of Iraqis.
Iran also has strong ties to the Kurdish Iraqi groups. Iran has provided shelter for the Iraqi Kurds numerous times throughout the 20th century, most recently following President Saddam’s brutal suppression of a 1991 uprising.
Eight million Kurds live throughout Iran, where their distinctive dance, music and dress are officially recognised as one of the nation’s traditional cultures.
The 3.5 million Kurds and majority Shiites of Iraq will likely make up important components of the Iraqi federation sketched by opposition groups in Washington last summer. Mr Zebari said the Kurdish delegation, headed by the nominal Kurdish co-prime minister, Nejivan Barzani, wanted to make sure Iran was on board.
The delegation spoke extensively with Mr Rafsanjani, the former president of Iran who heads the powerful Expediency Council and wields enormous influence in the republic’s complicated government.
"This wasn’t a diplomatic exercise," Mr Zebari said. "This was hard politics. We talked to the doers. Not to the lawyers and diplomats."
Mr Zebari said the Iranians seemed especially curious about what the Americans were saying about Iran during the meeting in Washington. "We very frankly and openly related to them the aims of the United States. The aim is to make the Iraqi people free, not to occupy Iraq. They would like the neighbouring countries to assist."
Mr Zebari said the Iranians have been quietly and subtly helping Washington’s war efforts. During the Tehran meetings, Iran agreed to streamline trade routes to northern Iraq, whose people fear it will be cut off from energy and trade in the event of a long war. Over the past few weeks, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have increased their presence on the Iraqi border and set up refugee camps.
A leader of an Iraqi Muslim extremist group was arrested at Tehran’s Mehrabad airport and sent to Holland. "These are all added pressures on Saddam."
Iraq warns Tehran on Washington's plans
Iraq warns Tehran on Washington's plans
news.scotsman.com
THE IRAQI foreign minister, Naji Sabri, met Iran’s president, Mohammad Khatami, yesterday and offered Baghdad’s old enemy a warning about the United States’ intentions in the region.
The two men kissed as they greeted each other at an ornate royal palace set in lush grounds in northern Tehran. But the smiles were gone after the hour-long meeting and Iranian officials barred cameramen and photographers from picturing the ashen-faced pair as they emerged from the talks.
"The United States’ behaviour is not just a threat to us [Iraq], but a threat to the Islamic world," Mr Sabri said.
His message seemed designed to appeal to an Iranian audience that, despite its distaste for Saddam Hussein, is wary of US troops on its western border to match those on its eastern frontier in Afghanistan.
But while Iranian hard-liners have stepped up their anti-US rhetoric in recent weeks, the Iranian vice-president, Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a close aide to Mr Khatami, has said Iran would prefer anybody ruling Iraq to President Saddam.
Iranian newspapers also wondered what would be achieved by Mr Sabri’s visit. "Don’t invest in losers," said a headline in the English-language Iran News.
"Iraq is the only country that would benefit from such a visit," it quoted its proprietor, Mohammad Soltanifar, as saying. "The only thing Naji Sabri’s visit would accomplish is to associate Iran with a regime that is in its dying days."
Iran wants to avoid war on its doorstep and, in public at least, has repeatedly called on Iraq to comply with UN resolutions and to admit arms inspectors.
"Iran is trying to avert war in the region," state radio quoted the foreign minister, Kamal Kharrazi, as telling Mr Sabri. "It is Iraq’s responsibility to prevent the rise of tension in the region by co-operating with the United Nations."
But Iran also fears that a US-led war would send a flood of refugees across the border, scare off sorely needed investors and drag the economy down, the Iranian finance and economy minister, Tahmasb Mazaheri, said. "We hope that it will never be done."
Iran and Iraq fought to a standstill in a bitter 1980-88 war, launched by Saddam, that killed around one million people.
But they were lumped together by President George Bush in his speech earlier this year as part of an "axis of evil".
Analysts say, however, that the US is now keen to gauge Iran’s likely attitude to a military campaign to overthrow President Saddam, and that it sees Kuwait as a possible broker between Tehran and Washington.
Mr Sabri’s visit coincided with that of Kuwait’s defence minister, Sheikh Jaber al-Hamad al-Sabah, who also was due to meet Mr Khatami in Tehran yesterday.
Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, is to visit Iran in the next couple of weeks. |
