Waking Up to Iran
Anyone who cares didn’t need Gen. Petraeus’s testimony to know that Iraq is a thousand percent better now than it was last September, and another thousand percent might make it almost tolerable. Iraq, indeed, wasn’t the point of his testimony – Iran was the point. And the message is clear.
Anyone who cares didn’t need Gen. Petraeus’s testimony to know that Iraq is a thousand percent better now than it was last September, and another thousand percent might make it almost tolerable. Iraq, indeed, wasn’t the point of his testimony – Iran was the point. And the message is clear.
Iran has been at war with the United States since the Revolution in 1979, because the Ayatollahs need an external enemy – and who better than we, always more likely to try to win them back than fight them (message to Obama). Fifty-five years after Moussadegh and 29 years after we dumped the Shah, the United States remains an essential bete noir. Earthquake relief; the rescue of Muslims in Bosnia and Kuwait; support for Kosovo independence; and the overthrow of Saddam, rescuing thousands of Shiite Marsh Arabs are irrelevant.
Persian Iran is on the march – building nuclear and long-range missile capability; spreading Shiite messianism and Persian influence; co-opting Syria; popping up in Africa and South America; arming and training Hezballah; even supporting Sunni Hamas – working with anyone who shares either or both of their goals: increased Islamic influence and the diminution of the United States.
Iraq has become an essential battlefield – NOT because we overthrew Saddam; that much even they appreciated – but because Iran assumed we would leave and allow them unfettered access to the Shiite Arab majority country and through that, direct access to Syria, Jordan and finally Israel. Iranian support was, at first, through proxies including Moktada Sadr and the Shiite parties. It was supposed to be enough.
The Americans were supposed to get bloodied and run. Iraq’s Shiites were supposed to put religion before Arabism and certainly before Iraq-ism. We didn’t and they didn’t.
We made our stand with the Sunnis fighting al Qaeda, and at some point, the al Maliki government decided Iraq shouldn’t be an arm of the Ayatollahs. The Iranians had to increase aid to their allies in Iraq and thus acquired increased visibility – something they did not want, but into which we forced them by not rolling over.
The offensive against Sadr’s forces in Basra and Baghdad required American and British assistance. But a little-reported upon meeting over the weekend brought together all of Iraq’s parliamentary parties except the Sadr parties in support of the al Maliki government. The Iraqi government and its army showed in Basra that they are forging a national identity as Iraqis, not as Shiites or Sunnis rentable by al Qaeda or Iran. Is this not the political “surge” we sought and the “reconciliation” we have demanded?
Gen. Petraeus rightly told Congress that Iraq is fragile and we have a lot of work left to do. This is no time to be sanguine. Even if Iraq continues to do well, it is only one front in the larger war against terrorists and the states that harbor and support them. And as Iraq continues improve, Iran will be looking for other fronts in its continuing war against the United States and the West.