[Mb-civic] NYTimes.com Article: Fighting the Next War

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Fighting the Next War

August 16, 2004
 By DILIP HIRO 



 

TEHRAN - The United States has reached a dead end in Iraq,
like a trapped wolf," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei recently said
at a gathering of Shiite clerics. "It is trying to frighten
people by roaring and clawing. But the people of Iraq will
not allow the United States to swallow their country.'' 

Such comments are unsurprising, perhaps, coming from the
Middle East's most powerful Shiite leader, especially at a
time when American forces are engaged in a pitched battle
in the Shiite holy city of Najaf. But whatever the
political motives for the remarks of Ayatollah Khamenei,
who is the supreme leader of Iran, they raise deeper
questions about the complicated relationship between the
United States and the two largest Shiite-majority countries
in the world. 

It is hard to judge what most Iranians think of Ayatollah
Khamenei's views on Iraq and the American military presence
there. On a recent journey through Iran, I found public
opinion about America and its invasion of Iraq to be
diverse and nuanced. Yet the American position on Iran
remains unyielding and focused on Iran's nuclear weapons
programs at the expense of almost all else. 

"Iran will either be isolated or it will submit to the will
of the international community," Condoleezza Rice,
President Bush's national security adviser, said last week.
Regardless of the merits of her position, her tone surely
stuck most Iranians as threatening - exactly the opposite
of the attitude America needs to convey. 

While discussing contemporary Iraq, many Iranians refer
directly or implicitly to the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, which
consumed at least half a million Iranian lives and caused
untold misery. The nearer the Iraqi border, the more
painful the memories of the conflict and the greater the
dislike and distrust of Iraqis and Iraq - with or without
Saddam Hussein as their leader. 

Iran's oil-rich Khuzestan province, bordering Iraq and the
northern tip of the Persian Gulf, suffered heavily in the
war with Iraq. The city of Andimeshk, in the northern part
of the province, was among the many urban centers that were
hit repeatedly by Iraqi surface-to-surface missiles. A
large billboard at one of the entrances to the city
displays the gaudily painted portraits of the war dead,
routinely described as martyrs. Bronze sculptures of
soldiers and airmen grace a busy square. Taeb Haideri, a
55-year-old receptionist at the city's Grand Hotel, said
that the Americans should stay in Iraq for "10 to 20
years." If they leave before then, he said, Iraq may once
again create problems for Iran. 

Along the gulf coast is the port city of Khorramshahr, with
about 140,000 residents. It was the site of fierce battles
in the Iran-Iraq war. Here I found Sayyid Mahmoud, a small,
dark, bespectacled man, fishing along the esplanade on the
Karun River a few hundred yards from its confluence with
the Shatt al Arab (Arvand Rud, to Iranians). It was a
dispute over this waterway between the two countries that
set off the war. 

Describing himself as a retired shepherd, Mr. Mahmoud
pointed to the many damaged or destroyed houses across the
road, including his own. He, too, was glad that the
Americans deposed Saddam Hussein, he said, and thought they
should stay in Iraq and follow through on their plan with
little international help. 

A few hundred miles south on the Persian Gulf coast is the
port city of Bushehr, which like Khorramshahr suffered
heavy damage in the war. There I met Khosrow Warrast, the
middle-aged head waiter at Malvan Hotel and Restaurant.
America is doing to Iraq what Iraq did to Iran during the
war, he said approvingly. But now, he said, the longer the
American troops stay, the more the Iraqi people will turn
against them. He advised the United States to withdraw its
troops as soon as possible. 

Farther from the Iraqi border, memories of the war are less
raw - and a sense of kinship with the Iraqi Shiites is
stronger. This is especially true in Qum, in central Iran
just south of Tehran, the country's religious capital and
the site of its largest theological college. "Iranians and
Iraqis are the same people - Shiites," said Muhammad Javad
Islami, a 60-year-old caretaker. (He was apparently unaware
that 40 percent of Iraqis are not Shiites.) 

Qum is also the base of Grand Ayatollah Kadhem al-Husseini
al-Haeri, an elder Iraqi-born cleric who came to the holy
city for religious studies in 1973 and never returned home.
A protégé of Ayatollah Muhammad Bakr al-Sadr, who was
executed by Saddam Hussein's government in 1980, Ayatollah
Haeri belongs to the interventionist school of Shiite
Islam, which advocates clerical participation in politics.
He is vehemently opposed to the American military presence
in Iraq. 

On April 7, 2003, Ayatollah Haeri declared that Moktada
al-Sadr, a relative of the man Mr. Hussein killed in 1980
and the radical cleric whose so-called Mahdi Army is
battling American forces in Najaf, "is our deputy and
representative in all fatwa affairs," or religious matters.
"His position is my position," he said. 

Overnight, Ayatollah Haeri's declaration strengthened the
religious standing of Mr. Sadr, who is not an ayatollah and
thus does not have the authority to issue religious edicts,
or fatwas. This enabled him to set up a network that
covered the Shiite community throughout Iraq, and laid the
foundation for his army. Yet there is little doubt that it
is Ayatollah Haeri who decides what position Mr. Sadr
should take regarding the United States troops and the
interim Iraqi government they are supporting. 

Ayatollah Haeri's followers in Iran include both Iraqi
exiles and Iranians. They stress their common Shiite
affiliation rather than their different languages and
histories. Abdul Karim Assadi, a middle-aged Iranian cleric
at Ayatollah Haeri's headquarters in Qum, said that since
the Iraqi and Iranian people are the same, their
governments will have to work together. It was up to him
and other Shiites, he said, to pressure their governments
to cooperate. 

Elsewhere, especially among the young, opinion was more
upbeat. One 22-year-old merchant who sold imported watches
in Tehran's grand bazaar said that if the Americans stayed
in Iraq and enacted democratic reforms, then it might also
affect Iranian politics, benefiting both countries. Azim
Habibi, the young owner of a new pizza and coffee shop that
plays Iranian pop music, said that he hoped American
investment in the region would help create jobs. 

Mr. Habibi's view, of course, is not universal - but then,
neither is Mr. Assadi's. What is striking about this nation
of nearly 70 million people is how its opinion of America
remains open. One way Washington might turn Iranian minds
more toward America is to stop constantly threatening
Tehran and start engaging Iran in meaningful dialogue. 

Dilip Hiro is the author of "Secrets and Lies: Operation
Iraqi Freedom and After" and "Neighbors, Not Friends: Iraq
and Iran After the Gulf Wars." 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/16/opinion/16hiro.html?ex=1093678493&ei=1&en=062ecdfa1346ad95


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