Iran's Meddling in Iraq: Dan Analyzes the ICG Report, Part 2

Continuing from where I left off yesterday in my analysis of the International Crisis Group (ICG) report on Iranian influence inside Iraq.

ICG: Iranian Leverage in Kurdistan

• Iraq's major Kurdish parties have had an ambivalent relationship with successive Iranian governments ever since the 1970s. Barzani relied on Iranian assistance during his 1974-75 rebellion, which collapsed after the Shah withdrew his support and came to an agreement with Saddam Hussein over the Shatt al-Arab waterway.

• During the 1980s, the Iraqi Kurds launched an uprising during the Iraq-Iran War in the hopes of using it as an opportunity to press for a better deal with the Iraqi regime while it was busy fighting Iran. As a result, when the tide of war turned against Iran the Kurds suffered heavily during the Iraqi al-Anfal campaign in which Saddam used his conventional forces augmented by chemical weapons to murder tens of thousands of Kurds and destroy most of their smaller towns and villages.

• Iran has supported the Kurds when it served their strategic interest to do so, such as during the 1980s or during its joint offensive with them in March 1988 to relieve Iraqi pressure on their southern front.

• In the post-Baathist Iraq, Kurdish ambivalence towards both Iran and the Baghdad government has continued. Seeing an opportunity to achieve greatly enhanced autonomy and possibly even independence, the Kurdish leadership have recognized that Iran may seek to actively thwart their aspirations. But because of Iranian assistance to the Kurds in both the wake of the chemical attack on Halabja and after the 1991 uprising, the Iraqi Kurds do not want to either ignore Iran or make an enemy out of them. Thus far, the understanding has been that the Iraqi Kurds will not push for independence, nor will they attempt to encourage the Iranian Kurds to follow their example.

• Iran was part of an alliance with Turkey and Syria that sought to contain the emergence of a US-backed Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq that collapsed only in 1994 when the major Kurdish groups started fighting one another.

• To defend its strategic interests in northern Iraq, Iran is on one hand expanding economic relations with the Kurds and on the other deploying VEVAK operatives and backing Ansar al-Islam.

• Cross-border trade has thrived since the fall of Saddam and Iranian investment has expanded in Suleimaniyah and other northern areas. Scores of contracts are under negotiation by Iranian private companies and while Kurdish leaders have welcomed the economic developments, they have also expressed concern in that VEVAK routinely infiltrates its operatives into the ranks of Iranian visitors.

• The Qarargah-e-Ramezan subdivision of the IRGC maintains an office an Suleimaniyah that the Kurds view as a front for VEVAK. Qarargah-e-Ramezan has also been accused of supporting Ansar al-Islam by helping the group's fighters to escape into Iran, releasing those detained by local Iranian police, giving medical treatment to their wounded, allowing some to travel to Afghanistan, and then sending them back across the border into northern Iraq to fight the US, even to the point of setting up a training camp in the Dizli mountains and bases in the Kurdish villages around Mariwan and Sanandaj.

• The PUK claims that the Ansar al-Islam fighters who have returned to Iraq from Iran carried Iranian ID cards. After captured Ansar al-Islam fighters, the Kurds confronted the Qarargah-e-Ramezan on the subject but were responded to with a dodge. Iran has publicly distanced itself from the group, but the Kurds believe that it has the backing of powerful forces in Tehran as a means of pressuring both the Kurds and the new Iraqi government.

• While Iranian seems to have a sizeable intelligence infrastructure in northern Iraq, it appears to have little traction among a population deeply suspicious of Iranian motives.

Iranian Leverage in Kurdistan: Dan Darling Responds

This is a pretty good section of the report and should kill the opinions of anybody who is still running around claiming that Jalal Talabani is an Iranian puppet (I should probably mention that his son is an acquaintance somewhere here) and places the aid that the Kurdish factions have received from Iran in the proper context - i.e. as an extension of the aid that they got from the Shah back in the 1970s.

The reporting on Ansar al-Islam is pretty good as well, except that I don't think that ICG is placing that aspect of the situation in the proper context. A specific unit of the IRGC (which we finally get identified as Qarargah-e-Ramezan) protected Ansar al-Islam after they got hit by the US during OIF, got any of their comrades who were picked up by Iranian police released, gave them medical treatment, facilitated their movement, and sent them back into Iraq to wreak havoc.

One other thing that makes any Iranian backing of Ansar al-Islam or its evolutionary descendant Ansar al-Sunnah (the group whose suicide bomber killed 22 at a US military base in Mosul back in December) so relevant is the fact that the latter organization murdered a good chunk of the Kurdish leadership in Irbil last February during a Kurdish summit that killed over a 100.

Here's some names from the body count:

• KDP deputy prime minister Sami Abdul Rahman (leading KDP intellectual)
• Irbil governor Akram Mintil
• Irbil deputy governor Mehdi Hoshnaw (Kurdistan's leading poet)
• Minister of Council Affairs Shawkat Sheikh Yazdin
• Agricultural Minister Saad Abdullah

I would submit that the fact that Qarargah-e-Ramezan basically assisted Ansar al-Islam in carrying out what could easily be construed as an act of war against the Kurdish leadership. Heck, Clinton fired cruise missiles at Iraq alone on the basis that it had been involved in an attempted plot against Bush the Elder back in 1993. In addition to the fact that Qarargah-e-Ramezan would seem to be complicit in the actions of insurgent groups that have killed hundreds of US troops (and attempts to "explain" this with respect to the MEK doesn't pass muster - the IRGC was already protecting Ansar al-Islam back when the MEK was still shooting at US troops at Saddam's behest), which you would think would be worthy of attention in of itself, they tried to murder the Iraqi Kurdish leadership and the IRGC is still supporting them.

This is one of the reasons why I'm so skeptical of the Pollack-Takeyh approach towards Iran (and Ledeen made this point in his review of Pollack's book) is that the basic approach seems to be that we regard Iran as basically being a smaller and not-yet-nuclear version of Russia or China, i.e. an authoritarian country with whom our disagreements (which ICG defines, and I presume Pollack agrees, as being their nuclear program, sponsorship of Hezbollah and Palestinian terrorist groups) can be negotiated away under the right incentives and circumstances. The problem is, if the IRGC is backing Ansar al-Islam and assisting them in the killing of American soldiers and Iraqi officials (Abu Talha, the chief Zarqawi lieutenant in Mosul, for example, is Ansar al-Islam if you want a contemporary example) without any action being taken against them from the rest of the regime, such as all of these wonderful Foreign Ministry types who assure us that Iran wants nothing but peace and friendship from Iraq. At some point, the perceptive observer has to ask where the BS stops and the real center of power inside the regime begins. And if the real power inside Iran regards it as okay to kill US troops and Kurdish officials, this is something that needs to be factored into play with respect to our negotiating an agreement with them and their ability to follow through on it even if the good soldiers of Qarargah-e-Ramezan decide otherwise.

Call it something worth considering.

ICG: Iran's Strategy of "Managed Chaos"

• The picture that emerges from the ICG examination of Iranian involvement in Iraq is one of widespread, diversified, but also cautious Iranian involvement in Iraq aimed at preserving the country's territorial integrity, avoiding civil war, promoting a pliable Shi'ite-run government, maintaining ties and influence on a variety of factions, and keeping the US at bay.

• Iran is concerned about Iraq's political (democratic) and religious (moderate Shi'ite) model also play into its involvement in Iraq. But these are less immediate preoccupations that the current policy of manipulating a wide range of actors and maintaining a degree of instability is viewed as mitigating.

• In achieving this policy, the Iran's security organs have run interference in Iraq's affairs, collected intelligence, promoted certain parties, supplied funding and weaponry, and occasionally even backed insurgents.

• Iran's strategy is designed to ensured that Iraq not emerge as a military, political, or ideological threat from either its failure and collapse or definitive success. Iran is interested in the unity of Iraq, but even more so in its own immunity from Iraq. This translates into a strategy of managed chaos.

• Since continued and expanded unrest in Iraq would threaten Iranian interests, Iran strives to be the "manager" of the manageable chaos inside Iraq. In November 2004, an Iranian cleric associated with Sistani condemned Iran for this strategy during an ICG interview in Mashhad.

• Iranian officials have publicly denied backing any of the chaos inside Iraq, even when lauding insurgents such as Muqtada al-Sadr, claiming that they don't need to stir up any chaos inside Iraq because US mismanagement during the occupation has achieved a chaotic situation all on its own.

• Iran's strategy has led it to hedge its bets in a situation of uncertainty over who will best serve Iran's interests short and long-term by building ties with a diverse range of parties ranging from Shi'ite Islamists to Kurdish factions to insurgent groups. In doing so, the Iranians can maintain some degree of influence in Iraq no matter what the outcome in the country.

• The one exception to this is that Iran does not not have significant contacts with insurgent groups or foreign jihadis, as the kind of chaos promoted by these groups and the xenophobic views that exist among former Baathists and many Sunni Arabs run directly counter to Iran's interests, as does the apparent bid by foreign jihadis to incite a civil war inside Iraq by attacking Shi'ite clerics, mosques, and civilian crowds. If these insurgent groups fought to prevent the Iraqi elections from taking place, Iran supported them as a means through which to bring its allies to power.

• Neither Iran nor Sunni Arab leaders have called for the immediate withdrawl of foreign troops from Iraq, only a withdrawl timetable. This should be viewed as a sign that both groups hate and fear one another far more than they do the US.

• The strategy of managing chaos inside Iraq is inherently risky for Iran because the various forces that it seeks to manipulate are less than a controllable sort. Chaos may also serve the interest of groups that are hostile to Iranian interests and Iran may find it impossible to strike the balance between controlled instability and controlled civil war. With the conclusion of Iraq's elections, moreover, the strategy may be seen to have succeeded and promoting a stable and legitimate Iraqi government may be the best way for Iran to secure the departure of US troops from the region. This suggests a possible convergence of interests between Iran and the US dependent on how the situation continues to unfold over the next several months.

• More importantly, any convergence between Iranian and US interests will depend on the evolution of US-Iranian relations. According to SCIRI officials, things could take a disastrous turn if the US tries to invade Iran or Iran tries to upset US fortunes in Iraq. If the US or Israel launches a military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities, Iran may well try to retaliate inside Iraq. If Iran has the ability to limit the chaos inside Iraq, it also has the ability to increase it.

Iran's Strategy of "Managed Chaos"

I'm not including the ICG's conclusion and recommendations because I view them as being flawed for a variety of reasons, much of them analytical in nature. Much of the initial statements with respect to the Iranian strategy inside Iraq are quite good and indeed, the whole of it seems to be consistent with what the ICG and myself agree as being the likely consensus view of the current "elected" Iranian government.

The problem lies in the fact that there appear, just based on the ICG data, to be at least two extremely powerful IRCG units (Qods Force and Qarargah-e-Ramezan respectively) that are operating apparently unopposed outside of that consensus, with or without sanction from the rest of the Iranian regime. I am also somewhat befuddled to read the ICG statement on p. 23 stating that Iran has no ties with foreign Sunni jihadis when pp. 19-21 dealt specifically with the IRGC Qarargah-e-Ramezan unit's ties to Ansar al-Islam, which ICG may not consider "foreign" since the bulk of its rank and file members are Iraqi Kurds, but is certainly Sunni jihadi in nature. To be quite honest, this strikes me as little more than an attempt to obfuscate or recoil from the conclusions of one's own data, which seems to be one of the main problems with the ICG report to begin with.

In addition, the report fails to account for jihadi/al-Qaeda politics with respect to the issue of sectarian warfare. Zarqawi, as most people probably know by now, is vehemently anti-Shi'ite and sent a letter to bin Laden and al-Zawahiri requesting permission to instigate a sectarian civil war inside Iraq. What is not commonly known, however, is that Saif al-Adel overruled his request and got into major trouble with the Iranians for what happened during the 2004 Ashura bombings. It was after that point, you will note, that Zarqawi shifted his strategy away from sectarian attacks towards his largely successful attempt to rally the Iraqi Baathists (schismed and demoralized from the capture of Saddam Hussein) to his side, particularly those in al-Anbar province. Since his public declaration of allegiance to al-Qaeda, this shift away from sectarianism has become even more apparent with respect to Zarqawi to the point where his organization is now issuing denials of carrying out attacks on Shi'ite targets - the one exception being the bombings in Karbala that can be viewed within the context of a last-ditch effort to derail the Iraqi elections.

Also, I believe the bizarre claim that neither Iran nor Sunni Arab leaders have called for a US withdrawl from Iraq is demonstrably untrue. Any number of prominent Iraqi Sunnis have called for a US withdrawl from Iraq, this is the whole objective of the insurgency! As for Iran, while I don't believe that their official position calls for a US withdrawl, any number of prominent Iran leaders have made statements more or less to that effect. Moreover, I think the claim that Iran is more fearful of the Sunni Arab population in Iraq rather than the US is foolishness - who exactly does anyone think that the nukes are intended to deter?

It is certainly true that Iran has the potential to turn up the heat in Iraq with respect to the dynamics of the insurgency. This is why, among several reasons, that I feel that military action against Iran would be unwise under the current situation. However, I don't think that the eagerness of some parties to find a diplomatic resolution to the current US situation with respect to Iran is sufficient reason for us to pull the wool over our own eyes with respect to past and current Iranian actions. Any diplomatic resolution to the current situation with respect to Iran must accurately take into account the actions of Qods Force and Qarargah-e-Ramezan as well as VEVAK, otherwise we will find ourselves in the position of deliberately avoiding issues of contention in an effort to prolong the diplomatic process - a situation that I believe history has shown to be nothing less than a virtual guarantee of more conflict further down the line.

Enough already.