Monday, March 03, 2008
A short note on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit to Iraq
Stratfor, realist as ever, offers some interesting observations about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit to Iraq. Fair use excerpt:
There were the normal trappings of a state visit, and bilateral discussions and press conferences....
In many ways, the content of the visit was far less interesting than the mere fact that it took place at all. Try to imagine this happening a year ago. At that point, the viability of the Iraqi government was seriously in doubt, the United States was cranking up its surge and Shiite-Sunni violence seemed about to rip the country apart. The United States was hardly likely to countenance the presence of the Iranian president on Iraqi soil.
Iraqi Sunni sentiment is still hostile to Iran and there were expressions of hostility reported throughout the Sunni community during Ahmadinejad’s visit. But what is most striking is what didn’t happen. Suicide bombers didn’t conduct attacks throughout the Shiite region of Iraq in an attempt to disrupt the visit. For that matter, the Americans didn’t block the trip. They certainly could have — the presence of some 150,000 troops in the country gives the United States substantial leverage, and non-Shiite elements in the government could have been persuaded not to participate. But the United States did not use its leverage and did not object to the visit. And Ahmadinejad did not balk at paying a state visit to a government that was essentially crafted by the United States. These represent enormous changes in the status of Iraq over the past year.
Ahmadinejad’s trip was portrayed as (and effectively was) a meeting between the leaders of the sovereign state of Iran and the sovereign state of Iraq. Formally, it was as if the United States wasn’t there...
There was much talk about this bringing closure to the bitter history of Iranian-Iraqi relations. But it seems to us that the more interesting dimension was that it established a new paradigm. The Americans and Iranians do not have to talk with each other publicly. The Iraqis can talk to both. In an odd way, this satisfies more than the American and Iranian need to ignore each other. The Iraqi government becomes more authoritative and perhaps more cohesive in this role, which suits the Americans, because the stronger Iraq becomes, the greater a geopolitical counterweight it is to Iran. And it suits Iran, because the stronger the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government becomes, the less of a threat Iraq is to Tehran. The trick now is to find the balance in which the Iraqi government satisfies U.S. interests by being anti-jihadist and it satisfies Iranian interests by not being dominated by Sunnis. (bold emphasis added)
I was particularly interested in the last sentence. If it was always true, as apologists for Iran have said, that a Shiite government would never assist Sunni jihadists (allowing those apologists to ignore connections between Hezbollah, for example, and al Qaeda), why should it be so difficult for the government of Iraq to find such a balance?
I will be very busy today, so discuss in the comments, with or without reference to my narrow question.
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