Thursday, May 04, 2006
Is Iran the primary beneficiary of our removal of Saddam Hussein?
The establishment critics of Operation Iraqi Freedom frequently claim that Iran is the primary beneficiary of our removal of Saddam Hussein and the resulting turmoil. Madeleine Albright said exactly this during the question and answer session of her speech last week at Princeton (scroll down for video and bandwidth selection). This is such a common claim that it is virtually received wisdom in the foreign policy establishment.
Now, it is well-established that Iran thought it had much to gain from the removal of Saddam's regime, and that it quietly coordinated with the Coalition's invasion. Given that the same critics believe that the invasion of Iraq was and is a disaster for the United States -- Albright believes it may be the single worst foreign policy blunder in American history, a judgment that I believe is not well grounded in history -- it is easy to jump to the conclusion that Iran is the big winner.
George Friedman, Stratfor's founder, thinks otherwise. In Tuesday night's letter, Friedman examined the positions of each of the main actors in Iraq -- the United States, the Shia, the Sunnis, the Kurds, Iran and the jihadis -- and had this to say($) about the condition of Iran's "balance sheet" three years after the fall of Saddam's government (bold emphasis added):
In Iran's ideal scenario, Iraq would become a satellite state. This would involve the installation of a Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad so beholden to Iran that Iraq essentially would be an extension of Iran. If that were to happen, Iran would have achieved the geopolitical goal of major-power status: It would be the unchallenged native power in the Persian Gulf. Given the existence of indigenous Shiite populations throughout the Arabian Peninsula, Iran not only would be in a position to influence events in other countries, but would have the opportunity to use direct force against them.
The prize would be Saudi Arabia. If Iraq fell under Iranian control, the road to the oil fields of Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states would be wide open. Other than the United States, there would be no power in a position to block the Iranians.
For Iran, this would be more than a matter of oil. If Iraq belonged to Iran and no outside power intervened, Shiite power could be amplified in the region. Sunnis, of course, vastly outnumber Shia within the Muslim world -- a structural impediment that, realistically, constrains Iran's ability to project itself as the leader of the Islamic world. Nonetheless, Iran has a need to burnish its credentials in this area and to be viewed as a regional hegemon. Control of Gulf oil would make Iran a regional power, but a rebalancing of Sunni and Shiite influence within the region would be heady stuff indeed.
In order for Iran to achieve this goal, the United States would have to withdraw from Iraq without having created a force that could block Iranian ambitions. Having the United States invade Iraq was in the Iranian interest because it got rid of Saddam Hussein. Having the Americans bog down in an endless war was in the Iranian interest because it offered the best chance of achieving Tehran's ultimate ambition. Iran has, therefore, been torn between two realities: On the one hand, in order to achieve its ambition, Iran needed a strong Sunni insurgency in Iraq -- but on the other, if a strong Sunni insurgency existed, Tehran's desire for the complete domination of Iraq could be thwarted.
Iran wound up with its own worst-case scenario. First, the Sunni insurgency swelled, creating a force that could not easily be controlled by the Shia. Second, the United States showed more endurance than the Iranians had hoped. In due course, the Iranian threat actually created a bizarre circumstance in which the United States and the Sunnis were simultaneously fighting and working together to block Iranian aspirations -- the Sunnis by demanding participation in the Iraqi government, and the United States by supporting their demands. Out of this came a third undesirable outcome: The Iraqi Shia, seeing themselves trapped between Iranian geopolitical ambitions and the threat of civil war without American protection, moved away from dependency on Iran and toward a much more complex position.
Unless the Sunnis were suddenly to collapse and the Americans were simply to withdraw, Iran no longer can expect to create a protectorate in Iraq. Its current goal must be much more modest: It must have an Iraq that is no threat to Iran.
Now, this bit is part of a much longer discussion of the coming "negotiation" for the sharing of power in the new Iraq, and it is equally obvious that the United States is not in nearly as advantageous a position as it might have hoped a few years ago. Nevertheless, Friedman's take is an interesting counterweight to the conventional view that Tehran exerts control over the future of Iraq. Whatever the influence of the mullahs on the ultimate outcome, they won't be able to "Finlandize" Iraq as long as the United States supports Kurdish and Sunni aspirations in the national government. In fact, the risk that this might happen in the Shia southland of a divided Iraq may be the best argument against Joseph Biden's proposal to promote the federal division of that country.
6 Comments:
By 
Unknown, at
Thu May 04, 10:42:00 AM:
We are facing the same conundrum as the British faced in the first quarter of the last century: creating from the raw material at hand a country that's powerful enough to counterbalance Iran without being so powerful as to be a threat. Iraq was Britain's solution to the problem.
And it's why Biden's proposal is problematic. We can't enforce a unified Iraq but we need a unified Iraq.
I also think it's possible to over-estimate the natural affinity between Iran and the Iraqi Shi'ites. The nominal leader of Shi'a Islam isn't in Iran—it's Ali Sistani and he's definitely opposed to Khomeinism. But it's a lot of hope to pin on a single old man.
By Cardinalpark, at
Thu May 04, 01:42:00 PM:
So many answers. Iranians must have taken exceeding amounts of pleasure seeing Iraq fall, seeing Saddam pulled from a spider hole, his kids full of bullets, on trial for crimes against humanity. He was the mortal enemy of the Persian nation and the mullahcracy, and his demolition was definitely in their interest. If they could have, they would have loved doing it themselves -- talk about something around which to unify Iran.
But the Iranians were not alone in their satisfaction. Saddam was an overt threat to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. As is now well known and documented, Saddam was colluding with AQ in attempting to destabilize Saudi Arabia. The premise of his 1991 invasion of Kuwait was to seize their oilfields and move on to Saudi. Not too many folks crying for Saddam in those 2 Arab nations.
But wait, then there is Syria. Clearly, the young and stupid Assad played some ball with Saddam in advance of the American invasion. But the elder Assad and Saddam were hated rivals. He was a member of the 1991 US coalition which booted Saddam out of Kuwait. Not a lot of love between the two Ba'athist regimes. In fact, Syria's allegiance to Iran is a product of it rivalry with Iraq. Again, not too many dry eyes in Damascus. One complication though - Lebanon. Seeing all those Iraqis vote, coupled with the truly idiotic assassination of Hariri, triggered the Cedar Revolution, which led to Syria being booted out of Lebanon. Lebanon wins a big one, Syria loses. And Saudi benefits. So complicated.
Of course, everybody knows that the Israeli Wolfowitzeon neocon AIPAC lovers who fooled the Bush/ Cheney/Rumsfeld/Rice Axis are thrilled to see Saddam gone. Not that Saddam, for all his macho rhetoric, lifted much of a finger against the Israelis. A few scuds in 1991 to see if he could get a few Arabs on his side was about it. Wuss. A few bucks to fund suicide bombing. But nothing like taking a run at Kuwait and Saudi. That's where the oil is. He didn't really give a hoot about Tel Aviv or Jerusalem except it made for good, legitimizing rhetoric while he actually killed Arab Muslims right and left. No, when Saddam was a genuine threat to Israel, they bombed it themselves. Net net, I would call Israel a modest beneficiary of Saddam's fall, mostly because it was the beginning of the end for Arafat.
Who was hurt by it? Saddam, Arafat, Al Qaeda. Maybe Mubarak a little bit. All the local tyrants lost some sleep because they read Hemingway (and John Donne, the original carilloneur I think), and worry about the Bells Tolling. That's why they were torn about seeing Saddam go down.
Who gets the award for making chicken soup out of chicken shit? At the moment, I would say Qaddafi. He came in from the cold, and now has western oil guys crawling all over his country figuring out how to invest their profits in his oil infrastructure, which is about 30 years out of date. And when Tripoli again becomes a hot tourist destination -- which it will -- Libya will become one of the richest countries ion the region. Give that dirtbag huge credit. He swapped stupid, pointless weapons programs and related antizionist rhetoric for huge dollars. Good call Moammar. You win the prize. Outside of the Iraqi Kurds and Shiites, Libya was the primary beneficiary of the US invasion of Iraq.
By Final Historian, at
Thu May 04, 05:05:00 PM:
"Good call Moammar. You win the prize. Outside of the Iraqi Kurds and Shiites, Libya was the primary beneficiary of the US invasion of Iraq."
The guy may be crazy, but he ain't stupid.
By 
, at
Thu May 04, 05:33:00 PM:
Iran is the next domino to fall, although I would prefer Syria. Iran's leaders can't resist taking the plunge. When the Iraqis finally figure out they have to have a strongly federal system with high levels of regional autonomy, and achieve relative prosperity thereby--Iran's many minorities will be crawling all over each other to force the mullahs to provide the same, or get out of the f'n way.
By cakreiz, at
Thu May 04, 09:05:00 PM:
Iran's the big winner if for no other reason than because its single greatest regional foe, Saddam Hussein, was removed at US expense (lives and money). Certainly Iran's stature grew as a function of Saddam's removal. There is a contradiction between Iran's aspirations and supporting a Sunni rebellion, for sure. But I'm hard pressed to see how our occupation has adversely impacted Iran's short term fortunes.
By , at
Sat May 06, 11:32:00 AM:
The good lady is a dunce. She cannot grasp that during her time as secretary she helped cultivate the mess we now have. She is self-rightous and stupid.
