Iran is Bush's bogeyman

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The continuing crisis with Iran is a welcome distraction and blessing in disguise for the beleaguered Bush administration, writes Firas Al-Atraqchi---------

In February 2003, several thousand members of a Shia militia infiltrated Iraq from Iran and took up positions in anticipation of an imminent United States invasion.

Once US forces penetrated Iraqi defenses, the militia vanguard were joined by a heavily armed and fully mechanised Badr Brigade, the armed wing of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), ideologically and financially supported by their host country Iran.

The infiltration of the Badr Brigade effectively breached an agreement between its late leader Ayatollah Mohamed Baqir Al-Hakim and the US military that his militia would not enter Iraq until well after Saddam Hussein had been deposed. But there was no complaint from Washington.

Instead, hoping to entice Iran to play a constructive role in controlling and stabilising Iraqi Shias, Washington made a dramatic concession to the Islamic Republic by shutting down its greatest internal threat -- the Mujahidi Khalq rebels.

Mujahidi Khalq, who had mounted attacks against the Tehran theocracy with the tacit support of Saddam Hussein, were disarmed and disbanded. Their bases were taken over by US forces and their Kurdish allies.

Iraqi Shia Ayatollahs and lesser clerics, who had been based in Iran (and to a lesser extent, Syria) were allowed to return to Iraq en masse.

Tens of thousands of former Iraqi soldiers, who had defected to Iran, as well as Iranian military advisers, took on security portfolios in the newly-liberated country.

Clerics immediately called for Iraq to become an Islamic state following Shariah law. Rules, regulations and civic codes were rewritten in municipalities to reflect this change as thousands of militia members patrolled the streets.

Revenge killings mushroomed and rights groups complained of abuses against women and minorities.

But Washington was silent, quietly hoping Iran, and its parade of Ayatollahs, such as Ali Al-Sistani, could help bring order to Iraq.

Three years later, the bizarre US-Iran nexus has been turned on its head and condemnation of Iran's involvement in Iraq is all the rage in US media.

How did this reversal of fortuitous friendship come about?

When Iraq was invaded by US forces in 2003, President George Bush's approval rating stood at 68 per cent and a majority of the public favoured military pre-emption in the oil-rich nation.

In January 2005, his approval rating stood at 57 per cent dropping to 45 per cent in August.

It was around this time that Iran's involvement in its neighbour began to be highlighted by US military leaders and Washington- based think tanks.

The flood of anti-Iran verbosity began to rise considerably as the president's numbers continued to decline. Last year, on 14 August, Bush told Israeli TV "all options were on the table" hinting a military option had not been ruled out in dealing with Iran's "support of terrorism" and nuclear programme.

"The use of force is the last option for any president. You know, we've used force in the recent past to secure our country," he said. This was considered to be the most belligerent tone the president used against Iran to date.

When Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Al-Faisal addressed the Foreign Relations Council in Washington on 21 September and said the US had handed Iraq over to Iran on a silver platter, Bush's approval rating stood at 42 per cent.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was sitting by his side. Up to that point, Rice had given the Iranians "soft" warnings.

In July 2005, she said "The Middle East is changing, and even the unelected leaders in Tehran must recognise this fact. They must know that the energy of reform that is building all around them will one day inspire Iran's citizens to demand their liberty and their rights. The United States stands with the people of Iran."

So was Al-Faisal's tirade a sharp rebuke of Washington's policies in the region?

Hardly, rather it paved the way for a flurry of speeches and policies directly implicating Iran in the deterioration of security in Iraq.

On 1 October, Rice said "Any champion of democracy who promotes principles without power can make no real difference in the lives of oppressed people."

By 3 October, a CBS poll found Bush's approval rating at 37 per cent. On 6 October, British Prime Minister Tony Blair indicated Iran could be behind advanced explosive devices which had killed US and British troops.

Three days later, for the first time, US media began to report that death squads were suspected of operating in Iraq. "The murder of 22 men in one Baghdad neighborhood is being blamed on a corrupt police force with ties to Iran and the heart of the national Iraqi leadership," the Washington Times reported.

The above quote should not be taken lightly. It does two things: ties Iran to the violence and therefore corroborates Blair's statement and also belies Iran's infiltration in the Iraqi government.

On 12 October, US intelligence published a letter from Al-Qaeda leader Ayman El-Zawahiri purportedly to wanted Jordanian fugitive Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi. Among other things, the letter indicated several Al-Qaeda operatives were based in Iran and crossing over into Iraq. Al-Qaeda claimed the letter was fake.

On 15 October, US Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton accused Iran of lying about its nuclear programme and that it was secretly developing nuclear weapons. And, on 19 October, testifying before a Congressional Committee, Rice refused to rule out a military option against Iran.

A Zogby poll on 21 October found Bush's approval rating had rebound to 45 per cent. On 26 October, US Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad begins to increase the rhetoric against Iran. At a White House briefing he says: "Of course, we are opposed to Iranian policies with regard to Israel, we're opposed with regard to their nuclear policy, with regard to their support of terror, with regard to their negative policies in Iraq."

But since October, violence in Iraq had catapulted to frightening levels. The US military listed improvised explosive devices as the leading killer of US troops -- more than 100 servicemen and women were killed in Iraq breaking the 2000 mark, a "grim milestone", according to US media.

A disturbing phenomenon had also been introduced to the Iraqi landscape, scores of bound and executed men, mostly Sunnis, started to turn up in ditches, near mosques, etc.

Despite the passing of the referendum, violence did not abate and sectarian warfare skyrocketed.

After Iranian President Ahmadinejad's call for Israel to be wiped off the map in late October, Blair said "If they [Iran] continue down this path, then people are going to believe that they are a real threat to our world security and peace."

On 7 November, Blair accused Iran of supporting terrorism in Iraq and elsewhere saying "There is a reason why Iran and Syria do their best to destabilise the situation in Iraq because they know that if Iraq is allowed to develop as a strong, Muslim state but with secular democratic government, then it's the best argument you can possibly have for people in Iran and in Syria to say 'Why don't we have some of that democracy? Why don't we have proper civil and human rights, too.'"

By 14 November, Bush's approval rating dropped to between 35 and 37 per cent. In the same period in 2001, his approval rating was 87 per cent. By 17 November, reports of death squads associated with Shia militia in turn associated with Iran were now hogging media headlines.

"One such group, the Volcano Brigade, is operating as a death squad -- under the influence or control of Iraq's most potent Shiite factional militia, the Iranian-backed Badr Organisation, said several Iraqi government officials and western Baghdad residents," wrote the Seattle Times.

This followed a spectacular US raid on several detention centres, some run in buildings belonging to the Interior Ministry, where dozens of Sunni Iraqis were freed from torture at the hands of the Badr Brigade.

A virtual blitz enveloped as pictures of emaciated, tortured, and murdered Sunni men were published in the media and on blogs.

The finger of blame was again pointed at Iran. On 27 November, former interim Iraqi Defense Minister Hazim Al-Shaalan said Iran was running affairs in Iraq.

A careful charting of the steady decline of Bush's approval rating plotted against the rise in Iran-centric rhetoric reveals an inversely proportional relationship at work; the lower the president's approval rating, the louder the rhetoric against Iran gets.

Six months later, the same formula still holds true. Bush's approval rating has fallen to 32 per cent and now there is open talk of military action against Iran.

Khalilzad has upped the ante on Iran, blaming its allies in Iraq for sectarian violence, and directly implicating it in arming Ansar Al-Sunna, a major terrorist organisation in Iraq according to the US military, with advanced explosives.

That notion that Shia Iran is arming Sunni fighters in Iraq -- who are also targeting Shia militants -- is nothing short of an outrageous flight of fancy.

But to the US public it rings true. Translation? Every time a US serviceman is killed by IEDs, the public is meant to direct its anger at Iran.

In addition to its alleged meddling in Iraq, the Iranian nuclear programme has been the source of much speculation and paranoia in the US media for the past two years. Iran, we were told, was two years away from having the means and technical expertise to build an atomic weapon.

In the past two weeks that estimate was reduced to an astonishing 16 days by some US pundits after Iran declared it had successfully enriched uranium.

For the Bush administration, the focus on Iran is a welcome, if not contrived, distraction from the woes that continue to shame and blame the White House and the planners of the Iraqi invasion.

In recent weeks, Bush administration policy has even been rocked by criticism from former senior US generals.

Therefore, blaming and targeting Iran fulfills several US strategic imperatives in the region.

Firstly, with the threat of a nuclear holocaust played up in the media and aired by "expert" talking heads, the public will turn its focus away from Iraq to dealing with Iran.

Furthermore, it has become abundantly clear that the US has no viable exit strategy in Iraq and has on the contrary made contradictory statements regarding the duration of the US military presence in Iraq. Will US forces be out by the end of the year or will they remain for a decade ... or more?

That question can be answered by examining the expansive military bases, campgrounds, and runways being built by a horde of military contractors throughout Iraq.

The US military has budgeted $74 million for the extension of the Al-Asad military base in Balad, Iraq. Spanning 49 square kilometres, it is so large that it requires bus transportation (routes have already been built). US military engineers have also been reinforcing Iraq's aging runways to sustain F-16 and other US air force use.

And this is just one of several similar military bases and expansions concurrently underway in Iraq.

This may appear puzzling at first -- why build bases if the US intends to withdraw as soon as security and military control is handed over to the Iraqis?

Iran, of course, is the most available answer. With its sponsorship of terrorism and active pursuit of fuelling sectarian violence -- as espoused by both US and UK officials -- the most logical recourse is for the US to maintain a near-permanent presence in Iraq to protect it from Iranian intervention.

Iranian dissidents have also upped the ante waxing imploringly of the dire situation in Iran declaring to the world to come to the salvation of the Persian peoples shackled by the evil Islamist Mullahs.

"Prince du jour" Amir Taheri, former editor of Kayhan, Iran's largest daily newspaper and current "exile" in Europe said last week that Iran was out to dominate the Middle East, threaten both Israeli and US interests in the region, and manipulate world economies in its stranglehold of vital oil resources.

"The Iranian plan is simple: playing the diplomatic game for another two years until Bush becomes a "lame-duck", unable to take military action against the mullahs, while continuing to develop nuclear weapons," he writes.

All at once, Iran has become the main instigator of all that is wrong in Iraq and the justification for an extended US military presence in the country.

It has also, more disturbingly, become the poster "rogue nation" validating the notion of pre-emption with some hinting that tactical nuclear weapons could be used for the first time since 1945.

The fear that the US could very well implement a nuclear option prompted 13 prominent US scientists to send an open letter to Bush saying a tactical nuclear strike would have "disastrous consequences for the security of the United States and the world".

White House officials are hoping that the strategy of focusing on Iran as the next greatest, most imminent threat will resuscitate Bush's flagging popularity and place in history.

Writing in Rolling Stones magazine, Sean Wilentz, Dayton- Stockon professor of history and director of the programme in American studies at Princeton University, says Bush is a strong candidate for worst-ever president in US history.

"Barring a cataclysmic event on the order of the terrorist attacks of September 11th, after which the public might rally around the White House once again, there seems to be little the administration can do to avoid being ranked on the lowest tier of U.S. presidents."

Nothing rallies a country around a leader like a war built around the defence of principle.

Iran is that event, particularly when it is played up as the next big bogeyman in the Middle East that is not only threatening Israel -- America's only stalwart democratic ally in the area -- but also undermining the democratic flowering of neighbouring Iraq.

In October 2002, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd said: "The administration isn't targeting Iraq because of 9/11. It's exploiting 9/11 to target Iraq. This new fight isn't logical -- it's cultural. It is the latest chapter in the culture wars, the conservative dream of restoring America's sense of Manifest Destiny."

The threat of Iran's alleged nuclear weapons programme is very much fomenting in the shadow of 9/11. With Iran having considerably developed its nuclear capabilities, the fear-mongering of a mushroom cloud over a US city is very much still valid in the average American's psyche.

Beyond the Iraqi quagmire, Iran also provides the justification for cutting off financial aid to Hamas, billed as an Iran proxy, as well as pressuring Lebanon's Iranian-backed Hizbullah to disarm.

It also allows more indirect pressure to be heaped on Syria, one of the three countries (Iran and Hamas being the others) Israel labelled as the axis of evil in the Middle East.

Iran, unfortunately, is the glue (and target) that ties all US Middle East policy together.