It certainly looks like Sadr is marked and we are now siding more with the Sunnis.
-Am
This is a repost.
Iran covers all its bets in neighboring Iraq Posted on Thu, Aug. 25, 2005
By Warren P. Strobel
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON - When rival Shiite Muslim factions battled in Iraqi cities this week in a worrisome new turn for the country's stability, neighboring Iran had little to lose: It supports both factions.
Iran has shrewdly pursued a strategy of "portfolio diversification" in Iraq. It backs a wide range of actors - even competing ones -with support, money and weapons to ensure that it has a say in Iraq's future, Western officials and analysts said.
"They are like lobbyists. They're spreading the money around, so whoever wins owes them," said Juan Cole, a University of Michigan professor and expert on Shiite Islam who's criticized U.S. policy in Iraq.
Iran's maneuverings in Iraq have taken on new urgency amid last-minute wrangling over a draft constitution and the Bush administration's charges that Tehran is fueling the anti-American insurgency with cross-border weapons shipments.
Those charges remain unproved, U.S. officials conceded, and are disputed by outside experts. They question why Iran's Shiite clerics would aid insurgents from the rival Sunni branch of Islam who are seeking to regain the power in Iraq they'd wielded under Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein.
But Iran has spread its largesse far and wide, the officials and analysts said, in pursuing three main goals in Iraq: promoting Shiite political dominance, keeping the United States off-balance and avoiding all-out sectarian civil war on its western border.
So far, it's achieved all three.
"I think the Iranians feel that they are basically winning in Iraq. They feel things are basically going their way," said Kenneth Katzman, a Middle East specialist at the Congressional Research Service, part of the Library of Congress.
Iran has maintained ties to secular Shiite leaders such as Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi, the former head of the exile group Iraqi National Congress, and to religious groups such as the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.
It's also reached out gingerly to firebrand nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, according to the analysts and a senior U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the issue of Iran's involvement in Iraq is being debated within the American government and involves classified data.
Al-Sadr's supporters battled with forces from SCIRI's military wing, the Badr Organization, Wednesday in the holy city of Najaf and other cities. The fight was part of an apparent turf war between the Shiite militias.
"Iran has built ties with an array of diverse and at times competing political forces - Shiite Islamist parties, of course, but also Kurdish parties and violent groups," according to a March report by the nonprofit International Crisis Group.
"In so doing, Tehran can maintain a degree of influence regardless of political developments and help steer those developments in less hostile directions," the report said.
It quoted European diplomats as saying Iran has provided al-Sadr, whose forces led an April 2004 rebellion against U.S. troops, with money and arms. But Iran remains wary of the unpredictable cleric, it said.
Earlier this month, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld went further, accusing Iran of allowing weapons to be smuggled across its border into Iraq for use against American troops.
"It is true that weapons clearly, unambiguously from Iran have been found in Iraq," Rumsfeld said at the time.
His remarks followed the seizure of a cache of sophisticated explosive devices in northeastern Iraq near the Iranian border. The devices use "shaped charges," which channel the power of an explosion and are used to destroy tanks and other armored vehicles.
American military forces report seeing a sharp rise in attacks using the more sophisticated weapons in the last few months.
While the shipment clearly came via Iran, who sent it and where it was headed remain in doubt, the senior U.S. official said.
"There's no quick jumping to conclusions that this stuff is Iranian, and even if it is Iranian, that (it) suggests complicity up and down the Iranian government," the official said. "People are looking at this in a vigorous way."
Wayne White, a former Middle East intelligence analyst at the State Department, said, "I cannot explain at all" the shipment. "If you were gun-running to your own people, you would never use that (northern) route," he said, referring to the fact that Iran's Shiite brethren are strongest in southern Iraq.
Cole, the University of Michigan professor, said the idea that Iran would aid Iraq's Sunni insurgents was "completely implausible."
One possibility is that the weapons were smuggled by the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, which is a client of Iran, helped al-Qaida build the shaped-charge bomb that damaged the destroyer USS Cole and has allied itself with Sunni groups occasionally to attack U.S. targets, analysts said.
Or, they said, with power in Iran spread among competing institutions, it could be a freelance operation.
If this is true and the spoils of war are to be divided, Sadr’s calling for a strong central government could be one major reason why the US has targeted him. The US being willing to give up the Shiite south and its oil to Iran in a loose federal system.
note: Sadr calls for a strong central government while the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution has adopted the loose federalism model of Kurdistan for the Shiite south. #msg-10215052
Look at what is hidden in the following text, again if true.
Yet, they have no say in what happens on its territory and the biggest slap came when the US, the occupying country, decided to strike a deal with Iran to divide the loots and the areas of power, knowing that Iran did not fire one bullet and not one American soldier came out of its territory.
-Am
The Arab Summit in Khartoum 2006-03-27 00:00:00 : Middle East > Opinion Abdel-Beri Atwan, editor-in-chief of Al Quds Al Arabi, an independent newspaper, wrote on March 27 that: “The Arab leaders should be arriving at the Sudanese capital Khartoum, to partake in the Summit that will start tomorrow. Nonetheless, all the indications reveal that the representation will be modest, as well as the outcome. Between the Algerian Summit that was held a year ago and the current Khartoum Summit, many developments have occurred in the Arab nation: Iraq is going through a civil war and has become an object of compromise between the Americans and the Iranians; Ehud Olmert is preparing to impose unilateral solutions on the Palestinians; the Darfur crisis is headed rapidly towards internationalization and a probable separation from Sudan.
“What we want to say is that the Arab situation is deteriorating at an alarmingly fast pace, and the status of Arab leaders is declining on the regional level after it had declined on the international level. This is clearly reflected in the Summit institution that is losing its importance, whereby it used to draw them together every year to find solutions to the crises that are spreading in the region. The new Iraqi President, Mr. Jalal Talabani - and we have a lot of reservations regarding the legitimacy of his representation of Iraq, not because he is Kurdish, but because he facilitated the invasion of his country – did the right thing by declining from attending the Khartoum Summit…
“Mr. Talabani knew very well that the Arab leaders, regardless of their age and status, have no role or say in today’s Iraq. Why should he waste his time and effort by attending meetings, from which Arabs themselves are absent and which the Arab public opinion cares little for… The new Iraq is not Arab. Its identity and belonging have become unknown and it could as well be American, Iranian, confessional, popular, elitist, but definitely not Arab, given the practices that are being conducted on the ground. The absence of Mr. Talabani from the Summit, is yet another proof of that reality.
“The Arab regimes have financed two wars on Iraq, and opened up their territories, bases and treasuries to destroy it the first time, and place it under the American occupation the second time. Yet, they have no say in what happens on its territory and the biggest slap came when the US, the occupying country, decided to strike a deal with Iran to divide the loots and the areas of power, knowing that Iran did not fire one bullet and not one American soldier came out of its territory.
“The previous Algerian Summit, inherited from the Tunisian Summit that preceded it, the political and democratic reform dossier. These are reforms that the Arab leaders launched in response to the American pressures that aimed to establish a large democratic Middle East. The US has backed down on its idea under Israeli pressures, and the Arab reforms instantly vanished… We say under Israeli pressures, because the rulers of the Hebrew state, after the Palestinian elections brought Hamas to power, the US interference to achieve democracy in Iraq brought Al Qaeda organization and Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, have become keener on keeping those corrupt dictatorships...
“If we want to give them credit, the Iraqi resistance and the Al Qaeda organization more specifically, were unintentionally behind the prolonging of the terms of Arab leaderships for a few years. The current image of Iraq and the fact that it has become a base for exporting terrorism and not democracy into the region (Amman, Aqaba, Sharm Al Sheikh, Taba, Damam), scared the Hebrew state, made the neo-conservatives cringe and led some of them to flee the sinking ship like mice, just like Fukuyama, Richard Perle and others did.
“Mr. Amr Mussa, the last dinosaur of the common Arab effort and the carrier of the old Arab regime banner, before Oslo, Wadi Araba and Camp David, will be the only one to come out as a winner from the Khartoum Summit. This is due to the fact that he will get an extension for a second term as the General Secretary of the Arab League, not because of his achievements and reforms, but because President Hosni Mubarak wants to keep him out of the Egyptian political scene, and keep him from competing with him or his son Gamal for the presidency, in the hope that the bequeathal of power goes smoothly.
“Mr. Mussa’s achievements are quite scarce and his attempt to imitate the European experience was shallow on all levels. The Arab Parliament he has established was disappointing and a replica of Arab parliaments that include the mummified and the applauders, with a few rare and limited exceptions. The same thing applies to the new skeletons that the Khartoum Summit is preparing to add to the Arab League grave, namely the Arab Court of Justice and the Arab Peace and Security Council that will handle the Arab-Arab conflicts. The problem of Arab leaders is that they excel at exaggerating their role and status, and compare themselves to others, while ignoring their defects which are seen by all. What Security Council and Court of Justice are they talking about, whereas not one Arab leader is wearing a pair of shoes that is made in his country?
“The Arab Summits have become a waste of time and money, and the only thing they are good for, is reminding the Arab people of the disasters that have and will fall upon them, thanks to these leaders and their catastrophic policies. The Sudanese people are proud and honest and are more worthy of the millions that will be spent on the Arab leaders that will attend the Summit… These leaders will not help [Sudan] in anything, and their meeting on its territory might even add to its suffering and hasten the internationalization of the Darfur crisis.
“We were hoping it would turn out to be a successful Arab Summit, since we are considered to be the most fervent supporters of common Arab efforts. But there’s a big difference between wishes and what is happening on the ground. We do not believe that things will get better, as long as these Arab leaderships are taking orders from Condoleezza Rice… and have become unable to receive a Hamas delegation, a party that has won the elections, unless it recognizes Israel. You can ask Khaled Mashaal, the head of the delegation that many Arab leaders avoided seeing, to the extent that an Arab Foreign Minister left the country the day the delegation arrived…” - Al Quds Al Arabi, United Kingdom Click here for source
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