PASSING THE BLAME

Guardian Unlimited, UK
8 Feb 07

The US is trying to hold Iran responsible for the escalation of
violence in Iraq, but this can only serve to make matters worse in
the region.

The White House strategy of pinning the escalation of violence in Iraq
on Iranian meddling is easily proven to be "a gross misrepresentation
of the facts".

After all what has Iran to gain from an unstable Iraq? With the fall
of Saddam, Iran’s major influence in Shia-dominated Iraq has grown. A
country gifted the upper hand by US foreign policy, need merely sit
back and reap the rewards. The emergence of a relatively stable Iraq
will mean that the Iranians are home and dry and can start lobbying
their close powerful allies in Iraq to make calls for a US exit.

It is hard to believe that even US officials have much confidence in
their charges against the Iranian government of trying to destabilise
Iraq.

Washington can choose to ignore the recommendations of the bipartisan
Iraq Study Group led by former secretary of state James Baker for
starting a dialogue with Iran. But it cannot discount its finding
that lays the blame elsewhere, showing that the Saudis are a source
of direct funding of Iraqi insurgents.

Last week Tom Friedman pertinently asked why Saudi Arabia, a country
where "private charities help sustain al-Qaida" around the world,
is a natural US ally, while Iran, whose residents on September 11
"were among the very few in the Muslim world to hold spontaneous pro-US
demonstrations", is not? He added that Iran "has never sent any suicide
bombers to Iraq, and has long protected its Christians and Jews".

Be that as it may, Washington may at least feel comforted to have the
backing of the Arab street and Arab leaders in unison for a change
in pinning the blame for the rising conflict in Iraq on the door
of Shia Muslims and, in particular, Iran. Especially at a time when
President Bush has urged the world to isolate Iran until it gives up
its "nuclear ambitions".

The Henry Kissinger model of negotiating with Iran from a position
of strength by pitting Sunni Arab regimes and Israel against Shia
Iran may be proving lucrative to arms dealers who are heartily
capitalising on the fears of countries such as Saudi Arabia. But
these divide-and-conquer tactics are clearly refuelling the poisonous
sectarian war in Iraq and it will prove catastrophic if such heightened
hostilities – unprecedented since the 17th century – spread throughout
Middle East. Three thousand Iraqis are killed every month. The dead,
by and large, are Shias killed by Sunni jihadists.

But even the media in the Arab world is unconcerned about these
mass murders and, at times, blames the slaughtered for provoking
the massacres by simply daring to exist and for having the audacity
to want a government that represents the majority Shia and Kurdish
populations of Iraq.

Also absent are the habitually noisy self-proclaimed Muslim community
leaders in the west, who are quick to voice their contempt for the
crimes and double standards of the west and misrepresentation of
Islam. Yet they are seemingly unaware of their own hypocrisies and
double standards in showing outrage at the deaths of Lebanese Muslims
in the recent war with Israel, but appearing to have no qualms about
the rising Muslim-on-Muslim killings in Iraq or Palestine, which are
increasingly becoming the enduring symbol of a faith they profess
to represent.

To simply point the finger at the United States for all the woes of
the Islamic world does not solve anything; yet Washington is once
more making very dangerous moves in the region. Perhaps Tony Blair
is right and the military option is now truly "off the table". But
the war of words with Iran and the extreme military build-up in the
area is an accident waiting to happen.

For many Iranians the ominous signs are all too familiar. On 22
September 1980 Iraq attacked western Iran, launching the longest
conventional war (1980-88) of the 20th century. That the United
States gave considerable assistance to Iraq during the war is well
documented. The United States wanted to see Iran overpowered, fearing
it would overrun or inflame other oil-producing states and export
its Islamic revolution.

Hundreds of thousands of Iranians were used as cannon fodder in
"human wave" attacks on Iraqi artillery positions. Yet one need only
walk through the Muslim, Armenian, Assyrian and Jewish cemeteries of
Iran and read the gravestones of the young men who died defending
their country to grasp the degree of patriotism towards a homeland
and a heritage that goes back thousands of years.

Some may view such national attitudes as yet another sign of our
extremist position. Be that as it may, Europeans need not look further
than the patriotism that sustained the first or second world war.

Unlike most countries in the Middle East, Iran’s borders are not
lines in the sand drawn on the impulse of 19th and 20th century
European colonialists.

So-called American thinktanks can think themselves blue in the face,
but Iran will not be balkanised.

Strategic strikes against Iran will not bring about an uprising;
just as they didn’t in 1980s when Iran was attacked. People are
unhappy with the regime and recently we have seen thousands of student
demonstrators on the streets of Iran chanting against their leaders;
yet in the pre-Iran-Iraq-war period it was not uncommon to see tens of
thousands of different disgruntled individuals on the march against a
dawning theocracy. Overnight, under the blackout of war, everything
disappeared and most political groups were gagged and labelled as
traitors. Faced with a greater external enemy, many others voluntarily
took an oath of silence for the sake of unity.

Today an international crisis will only serve to revive Iran’s infamous
president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and the Islamic Republic’s last naive
desperate grab for a rebirth.

So why is the US once again at the same juncture with Iran that not
so long ago, after eight years of a brutal war, failed, giving the
world a bolstered Saddam Hussein in the process? We are all aware
of the brutality and wrath that has been unleashed by the invasion
of Iraq. But what calamity or ogre will emerge out of yet another
possible war in the region? Will Israel become further barricaded
in a mode of relentless wars with its neighbours that would make the
recent war with Lebanon look like neighbourly banter? A Saudi Arabia
armed to the brim controlled by al-Qaida? A nuclear Pakistan at the
hand of jihadists? How certain is the United States of the stability
of these countries that it counts among its natural allies?

It may be worth remembering that nearly a year before the Iranian
revolution, the prevailing US intelligence assessment of Iran at the
time may well have impelled President Carter to call Iran "an island
of stability" in a troubled region.