Iraq Dances With Iran, While America Seethes
The Shiite leaders, though, already draw support from Iran as well as the United States in the face of the deep Sunni Arab resentment that has fed the insurgency here. Their political parties have historically had much stronger ties to Iran than to the United States, which, as they vividly recall, did nothing while Saddam Hussein slaughtered up to 150,000 Shiites who rebelled after the 1991 gulf war.
The Shiite parties also assume that the American enterprise here will probably end as centuries of foreign adventures in this part of the world have - with the imperial nation eventually withdrawing and leaving the region to sort out its own affairs.
Before American forces invaded, some analysts in Washington predicted that Iran would hold little appeal for Iraq's 17 million Shiites because they are Arabs while most of Iran's Shiites are Persians, historical enemies of the Arabs. That view failed to anticipate the depth of tension and violence that have now divided Iraq's Arabs, largely along lines of the two main branches of Islam, Sunni and Shiite. Still, American officials hold to the belief that, in the end, Iraqi nationalism, which Shiites here share, will keep Iraq from being pulled into Iran's orbit....
The Supreme Council's biggest Shiite rival, the Dawa Islamic Party, is led by Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, who lived in exile in Iran for many years before moving to London and who visited Iran this month.
Since then, he has been proclaiming the benefits of strengthening relations with Iran, despite the aversion to the idea by the Americans and by Sunni Arabs, whom the Americans want included in the political process...."
nytimes.com
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So if the US goes to war, or sanctions (which seems odd if the Bushies are saying Iran will have a bomb in a few years) against Iran, is it then siding with the Sunnis against the Shiites?
Odd. Strange. Yet more meddling. |
