Did President Bush recognize that invading Iraq and destroying a dictatorship controlled by the Sunni minority would lead to the domination of Iraq by its Shiite majority, thus giving Shiite Iran unprecedented influence in Baghdad?

The president clearly did not have this connection on his mind. On Jan. 10, 2003, two months before the invasion, author Kanan Makiya and two other Iraqi exiles opposed to Saddam Hussein met with Bush to discuss scenarios for a post-invasion Iraq. They were astonished to find he appeared unfamiliar with the Sunni-Shiite divide in Islam.

Bush's Pentagon advisers were better informed, but they, too, were not worried about empowering Iran. On the contrary, Douglas Feith, then-undersecretary of Defense for policy, told me the Shiite clergy in Iraq, who support the separation of church and state, are "enormously threatening" to Iranian ayatollahs who believe they have a divine right to rule. The net result of the invasion, he said, could well be "the unraveling of the regime in Tehran, with Iranians inspired by the example of the Iraqi revolution."

It's not surprising, then, that the Bush administration also failed to recognize the strong ties that the Islamic Republic had built up with anti-Saddam Iraqi Shiite leaders. Iran has close links to both of the strongest militias in Iraq — the Mahdi Army, which controls the areas of Baghdad closest to U.S. headquarters in the Green Zone, and Abdul Aziz al-Hakim's Badr Brigade, which sided with Tehran during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.

U.S. has few options

What this means today is that the United States cannot get its combat forces out gracefully or stabilize Iraq thereafter without Iran's cooperation. Tehran will continue to send weaponry to its Shiite clients until Washington is ready for a deal that ends the U.S. occupation gradually and accepts Iran as a major player in postwar Baghdad, along with the United States and, eventually, Saudi Arabia.

The Bush administration's implied threats to punish Iran militarily for its aid to the militias will be credible only if Washington is prepared for an all-out war. If U.S. forces bomb Iranian bases to retaliate, it could provoke such a war, and Tehran's allies in Iraq could make the U.S. presence increasingly untenable by firing high-powered rockets into the Green Zone. Already, the Mahdi Army has fired occasional small salvos into the zone.

On two recent visits to Iran, I was told repeatedly by officials that Tehran has been restraining cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, head of the Mahdi Army, and is ready to cooperate in stabilizing Iraq. In exchange, Tehran wants Washington to set a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. forces within, say, two years.

"We find it absurd that you should accuse us of 'interfering' in Iraq," said Mahmoud Vaezi, a former deputy foreign minister who now heads a think tank that advises Iran's Supreme National Security Council. "You have come from 6,000 miles away with 160,000 soldiers. Iran is an immediate neighbor of Iraq with a 1,000-mile common border and intimate historical, religious and economic ties going back for centuries. The United States helped Saddam during a war that cost us more than 300,000 lives, so naturally we want to be sure that Iraq is in friendly hands."

Iran sees compromise

By a "friendly" Iraq, Iran means one dominated by its Shiite co-religionists, who make up about 60% of the population. Tehran has carefully avoided taking sides in the internal Shiite power struggle and wants Washington to do the same. In the bargain envisaged by the Iranian officials I met, U.S. forces would end their military offensive against al-Sadr. Iran would stop him from firing missiles into the Green Zone and would end all aid to the militias once U.S. forces are withdrawn. The United States would stop building up Sunni militias that now number some 91,000 fighters. In Iranian eyes, the "Sunni Awakening" is part of a "divide and rule" U.S. strategy designed to offset Shiite power in Iraq and make it a U.S. protectorate with permanent U.S. bases. Tehran does not expect the United States to shut down all its bases but wants security guarantees ruling out their use for attacks on Iran.

What would happen to the Sunnis if the United States withdrew and if Iraq tilted to Tehran? They'd have to accept rule by the Shiite majority, just as the Shiites had accepted Sunni domination. But America does have a moral obligation to prevent their persecution. For this reason, a U.S.-Iran bargain should be accompanied by regional arrangements in which Saudi Arabia joins in stabilizing Iraq.

Negotiating tradeoffs with Iran that make possible an orderly withdrawal from the Iraq quagmire would not be "appeasement," as President Bush says. It is the necessary first step toward a broader dialogue designed to achieve two paramount U.S. security objectives: stopping Iran's development of nuclear weapons, and defusing the increasingly dangerous tensions building up in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East.

 

Selig S. Harrison is director of the Asia Program at the Center for International Policy