Iran’s Great Game

Last February, David Patel warned that rumours of al-Haeri’s plans to return to Iraq were circulating every few weeks, and that American contingency planners were deeply concerned by the news. “A year from now,” Patel wrote, “al-Haeri’s views and political ambitions could be extremely important for U.S.- Iraqi relations.”

Al-Haeri has been very active ever since the U.S.-led invasion. A few days before the fall of Saddam, in April, 2003, al-Haeri issued a decree, or fatwa, to Iraqi Shiites urging them to seize the first possible opportunity to fill the power vacuum in the administration of Iraqi cities. A month later, he declared that Shiite “compromisers” should be killed. And last July, he demanded death for any Jews who buy land in Iraq. Clearly, what al-Haeri wants for Iraq is nothing less than an Iranian-style theocracy. Patel believes that al-Haeri has been setting himself up to succeed the Ayatollah Sistani as Iraq’s top Shiite cleric.

But al-Haeri, like almost everyone else, has had trouble with Moqtada al-Sadr. Last July, al-Haeri broke with Moqtada and quickly bestowed his blessing on the older, more scholarly and obedient Sheikh Mohammed Yaqubi, whose strident writings attribute the crisis in the Middle East to a conspiracy of Jews and Masons, and identify Western power as Islam’s version of the Antichrist.

Nevertheless, Moqtada seems to have retained a low-level usefulness to Tehran; shadows of the Iranian hand re- emerged during Moqtada’s uprising this spring, which was triggered when U.S. administrator Paul Bremer closed Moqtada’s paper, Al-Hawza, for its incendiary rhetoric. Inexplicably, Bremer also chose that occasion, a few days later, to enforce a year-old warrant for Moqtada al-Sadr’s arrest in the murder of the U.S.-backed cleric, al-Khoei.

Whether or not Iran had a hand in Moqtada’s uprising, Moqtada was reported to have received a gift of hundreds of satellite phones, apparently from Tehran, in early April. On April 8th, the Italian daily La Stampa quoted Italian military intelligence reports saying that Ayatollah Khamenei had dispatched al-Haeri to help force the Coalition to withdraw. The London based newspaper, Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, quoting its source, Abu Hayder, claimed that many of Moqtada al-Sadr’s militia attacks against the Coalition had been led by Al-Qods agents.

But not everyone agrees that Iran was behind the April insurgency. A leading authority on Iraq’s Shiites, Professor Juan Cole of the University of Michigan, believes the violence was fuelled not by Iran but by a broader spectrum of Shiite anger at the Americans’ mishandling of the occupation. The CIA, the Coalition Provisional Authority, and the State Department also doubt, or at least play down, Iran’s involvement. On the other hand, the Pentagon and those close to Richard Perle, the former chairman of the Defense Policy Board, say they are certain of it.

In fact, both points of view may be right. Anger against America most certainly exists in Iraq, but that very fact provides fertile ground for exploitation by Iran. And even if Tehran did not directly instigate Moqtada’s rebellion, it had already given him sufficient financial support to cause trouble.

After the U.S. military trapped Moqtada and his militia in Najaf, Tehran responded positively to a British request to send diplomats into Najaf to help defuse the standoff. And by maintaining a posture of impartiality, Tehran seemed to have returned to a policy of short-term accomodation with the U.S. Still, it was the Iranian mission that, according to Italian intelligence, finally brought the hard-line Iraqi Ayatollah al-Haeri to Iraq, where he was rumoured to have intervened, not on behalf of Moqtada, but in favour of Sistani, by attempting to persuade Moqtada to leave the holy city in order to preserve it from a U.S. attack.

Reports that Ayatollah al-Haeri is finally in Najaf are ominous. If Moqtada al-Sadr’s influence has indeed been weakened, al-Haeri’s Iraqi nationality and his scholarly standing could allow him to unite Moqtada’s radical following with mainstream moderate Shiites who are running short on patience with the U.S. occupation. As early as last October, members of sciri were under pressure to accept alHaeri’s spiritual leadership, though they have so far resisted. An unnamed western diplomat quoted by David Patel warned late last year that “if [al-Haeri] returns to Iraq, he will strengthen Sadr and will open a real battle with Sistani for the soul of Iraqi Shiites. It will be very dangerous for the Americans. It will be like throwing a match onto gasoline.”

And so, the great game will continue. Before June 30th, Washington will continue to do all it can to stabilize Iraq, while accepting help from Iran on the side. For its part, Iran will continue to exploit the American lack of control on the ground to push its own influence into Iraq. Sovereign or not, Iraq can expect both Iran and the US to have a hand in the elections planned for next January. (The former Al-Qods officer, Haj Sa’idi, has claimed that Iraqi Shiites are being encouraged to support candidates put in place by Iranian intelligence agents.) On the Iranian side, reformers and radicals alike will put forward a religious and political agenda that is simpler and probably more effective than Washington’s plan to use Iraq to spread democracy throughout the Middle East. It is a battle of wits that the Americans did not expect, do not welcome, and, in all probability, cannot win.