Ahmadinejad's game
What the hell is Ahmadinejad doing, kidnapping 15 UK soldiers?
We know that The Surge is causing the Mehdi Army to splinter...
The Mehdi Army was Iran's main surrogate in Iraq. Iran would certainly try to counter that as best it could -- but this?
Hezbollah did the exact same thing with Israel in the summer. It was locked into a losing battle of attrition with the pro-Western Siniora coalition in Lebanon, but it radically reshuffled the deck after goading Israel into a showdown for which Israel was woefully ill prepared.
In Iraq, Iran's main surrogate is falling apart. The Fadhila party has bolted from the "unpatriotic" (read, "in Iran's pocket") Shia coalition and pretty much gone to war against Sadr's Basra organization. Sadr, who has been hibernating in Iran for some time now, is clearly losing control of his militia. If SCIRI gets strong enough relative to the other Shia factions, it doesn't need to depend on Iran anymore, in which case Iran loses the great game for southern Iraq.
By going after the UK, Ahmadinejad is putting massive pressure on the British. Iraq undid Tony Blair, and Gordon Brown was all set to get the hell out before this started. If Brown folds (pays something exorbitant to get its people back), it makes the US look incredibly weak.
Judging from earlier UK behavior Brown is pretty clearly the weakest link in the chain. So there is a frightening logic to all of it... I guess...
Things have been going pretty well for the US ever since its raid on an Iranian consulate in Arbil? that netted six or seven Iranian intel officers. (After that, they captured Moshem Sharazi, a Quds commander, at the home of SCIRI party leader Abdulaziz al-Hakim. Then Askari defected.) But the US would have already wrung most of the intel from the captured Iranians.
Basically, no matter how you rationalize it, the Iranians come across as very desperate. I just don't understand why...
Interesting times..
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