Stone Cupid Real

Iraq Winners Allied with Iran Are the Opposite of U.S. Vision
By Robin Wright
The Washington Post

Monday 14 February 2005

When the Bush administration decided to invade Iraq two years ago, it envisioned a quick handover to handpicked allies in a secular government that would be the antithesis of Iran's theocracy -- potentially even a foil to Tehran's regional ambitions.

But, in one of the greatest ironies of the U.S. intervention, Iraqis instead went to the polls and elected a government with a strong religious base -- and very close ties to the Islamic republic next door. It is the last thing the administration expected from its costly Iraq policy -- $300 billion and counting, U.S. and regional analysts say.

Yesterday, the White House heralded the election and credited the U.S. role. In a statement, President Bush praised Iraqis "for defying terrorist threats and setting their country on the path of democracy and freedom. And I congratulate every candidate who stood for election and those who will take office once the results are certified."

Yet the top two winning parties -- which together won more than 70 percent of the vote and are expected to name Iraq's new prime minister and president -- are Iran's closest allies in Iraq.

Thousands of members of the United Iraqi Alliance, a Shiite-dominated slate that won almost half of the 8.5 million votes and will name the prime minister, spent decades in exile in Iran. Most of the militia members in its largest faction were trained in Shiite-dominated Iran.

And the winning Kurdish alliance, whose co-leader Jalal Talabani is the top nominee for president, has roots in a province abutting Iran, which long served as its economic and political lifeline.

"This is a government that will have very good relations with Iran. The Kurdish victory reinforces this conclusion. Talabani is very close to Tehran," said Juan Cole, a University of Michigan expert on Iraq. "In terms of regional geopolitics, this is not the outcome that the United States was hoping for."

Added Rami Khouri, Arab analyst and editor of Beirut's Daily Star: "The idea that the United States would get a quick, stable, prosperous, pro-American and pro-Israel Iraq has not happened. Most of the neoconservative assumptions about what would happen have proven false."

The results have long-term implications. For decades, both Republican and Democratic administrations played Baghdad and Tehran off each other to ensure neither became a regional giant threatening or dominant over U.S. allies, notably Saudi Arabia and the oil-rich Gulf sheikdoms.

But now, Cole said, Iraq and Iran are likely to take similar positions on many issues, from oil prices to U.S. policy on Iran. "If the United States had decided three years ago to bomb Iran, it would have produced joy in Baghdad," he added. "Now it might produce strong protests from Baghdad."

Conversely, the Iraqi secular democrats backed most strongly by the Bush administration lost big. During his State of the Union address last year, Bush invited Adnan Pachachi, a longtime Sunni politician and then-president of the Iraqi Governing Council, to sit with first lady Laura Bush. Pachachi's party fared so poorly in the election that it won no seats in the national assembly.

And current Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, backed by the CIA during his years in exile and handpicked by U.S. and U.N. officials to lead the interim government, came in third. He addressed a joint session of Congress in September, a rare honor reserved for heads of state of the closest U.S. allies. But now, U.S. hopes that Allawi will tally enough votes to vie as a compromise candidate and continue his leadership are unrealistic, analysts say.

"The big losers in this election are the liberals," said Stanford University's Larry Diamond, who was an adviser to the U.S. occupation government. "The fact that three-quarters of the national assembly seats have gone to just two [out of 111] slates is a worrisome trend. Unless the ruling coalition reaches out to broaden itself to include all groups, the insurgency will continue -- and may gain ground."

Adel Abdul Mahdi, who is a leading contender to be prime minister, reiterated yesterday that the new government does not want to emulate Iran. "We don't want either a Shiite government or an Islamic government," he said on CNN's "Late Edition." "Now we are working for a democratic government. This is our choice."

And a senior State Department official said yesterday that the 48 percent vote won by the Shiite slate deprives it of an outright majority. "If it had been higher, the slate would be seen with a lot more trepidation," he said on the condition of anonymity because of department rules.

U.S. and regional analysts agree that Iraq is not likely to become an Iranian surrogate. Iraq's Arabs and Iran's Persians have a long and rocky history. During the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, Iraq's Shiite troops did not defect to Iran.

"There's the assumption that the new government will be close to Iran or influenced by Iran. That's a strong and reasonable assumption," Khouri said. "But I don't think anyone knows -- including Grand Ayatollah [Ali] Sistani -- where the fault line is between Shiite religious identity and Iraqi national identity."

Iranian-born Sistani is now Iraq's top cleric -- and the leader who pressed for elections when Washington favored a caucus system to pick a government. His aides have also rejected Iran's theocracy as a model, although the Shiite slate is expected to press for Islamic law to be incorporated in the new constitution.

For now, the United States appears prepared to accept the results -- in large part because it has no choice.

But the results were announced at a time when the United States faces mounting tensions with Iran over its alleged nuclear weapons ambitions, support for extremism and human rights violations. On her first trip abroad this month, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Iran's behavior was "something to be loathed" and charged that the "unelected mullahs" are not good for Iran or the region.

One of the biggest questions, analysts say, is whether Iraq's democratic election will make it easier -- or harder -- to pressure Iran.




Senator Urges White House to Join Talks on Iran
By Ken Silverstein
The Los Angeles Times

February 14, 2005

Top Democrat says a failure to get involved could result in the need for an invasion.
WASHINGTON - A top Democratic senator urged the Bush administration Sunday to join three European allies in negotiating with Iran to get it to abandon its nuclear programs, saying that failure to do so could result in the need to invade the country.
"This is a case where we're ... on the sidelines," Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on "Fox News Sunday." "The three European countries that are negotiating with the Iranians are saying, 'Look, we've got to get in the deal with them. We can't just sit on the sidelines.' "
In Tehran, a government spokesman warned the Bush administration Sunday against attacking Iran's nuclear facilities and said talks with the European countries could resolve the dispute.

Iran acknowledges that it has a nuclear program but says that it is pursuing peaceful energy production, not weapons. Britain, France and Germany have offered Iran economic incentives to drop any activities that could be used to develop nuclear weapons.

The Bush administration has suggested that Iran is using its nuclear power program as a shield to produce weapons, and says the White House will not rule out any option to stop the country from developing nuclear arms.

Biden criticized Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for her recent comments suggesting that the U.S. would not sign on to a deal between the Europeans and Iran even if Tehran agreed to accept a verification program to ensure that its nuclear program was only for peaceful purposes.

"Nothing [the Europeans are] going to be able to do is going to be involved with us unless we're willing to get into some kind of an agreement that results in a verifiable arms control agreement," Biden said on Fox.

He said that if diplomatic efforts failed, efforts to block Iran's nuclear program could be sent to the United Nations.

If both of those options failed, he warned, the U.S. would be left with only two unattractive choices.

"You accept them as a nuclear power, which I'm disinclined to do, or you invade, which we are not really particularly capable of doing right now," he said.

Speaking on CNN's "Late Edition," Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W. Va.), vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said that he had always viewed Iran as being "much more of a problem" than Iraq and that not taking the country seriously would be "an enormous mistake."

"Unlike Iraq, which didn't have nuclear weapons, they certainly are working on it," he said. "I think it's their ambition to have one, and my guess is they will get one."

In Tehran, government spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said Iran would never give up its nuclear power program. "Iran strongly insists on its views, and we will not give up our people's legitimate right," he declared at a news briefing.

He criticized the Bush administration for refusing to rule out the use of force against Iran, saying, "They know our capabilities. We have clearly told the Europeans to tell the Americans not to play with fire."

Asefi was upbeat about talks between his country and the European nations, describing them as "deeper and more professional."

German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer also called for the U.S. to back European diplomatic efforts.

"I think if the United States were to engage positively - and I'm aware of the difficulties of doing that - that it would substantially strengthen the EU drive," he said at a news conference in Munich on Sunday.

However, Fischer also said that the European Union would support tougher moves against Iran if Tehran was found to be carrying out weapons-related programs.

"If Iran were to behave unreasonably, against its own interests, if it for example restarted [uranium] enrichment ... then that would lead to the Security Council," he said.

In related news, the Washington Post reported Sunday that the United States had been using unmanned surveillance planes to fly over Iran and look for evidence that the country had ongoing nuclear weapons programs.

Although neither Rockefeller nor Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), the intelligence committee chairman who also appeared on CNN, would confirm that such flights were going on, Rockefeller noted that "Iran, like North Korea, is very, very dangerous."

"Everything we can do to gather intelligence and information - no matter who is doing it among our intelligence or military agencies - is for the betterment, because we're stretched so thin," Rockefeller added. "We need all the eyes on the ground that we can possibly get."

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Reuters news service was used in compiling this report.

Iran hardens nuclear stance
By Associated Press
Published February 14, 2005

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TEHRAN, Iran - Iran rejected a European demand to stop building a heavy-water nuclear reactor that provides a simpler way of extracting weapons grade fuel, and it warned the United States on Sunday "not to play with fire" by repeatedly threatening Tehran.

Iran has indicated previously it will keep its heavy-water reactor, but Sunday's announcement that it will not replace it with a light-water reactor was the clearest statement yet of its nuclear plans and represented a hardening of its position.

Both plants in question can be used to enrich uranium, a critical part in nuclear programs, but the extraction of weapons grade material from a light-water reactor is more difficult. Uranium enriched to low grades is used for fuel in nuclear reactors, but further enrichment makes it suitable for atomic bombs.

The statement underscored the unresolved differences between Iranian and European negotiators, who are continuing their talks over Iran's nuclear program even as the United States escalates its criticism of Iran.

This month, President Bush accused Iran in his State of the Union speech of being "the world's primary state sponsor of terror" and pursuing nuclear weapons. Although Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has said a military strike against Iran was "simply not on the agenda at this point," Bush has said his administration would not rule out any option.

On Sunday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi reiterated previous statements by top officials that Iran would not tolerate any acts of aggression, particularly from the United States.

"Rice and other U.S. officials are aware of Iran's capabilities," Asefi said. "During the talks with the Europeans, we told them in clear terms to tell their American allies not to play with fire, and the Europeans clearly got our message."

Iranian President Mohammad Khatami last week warned that Iran would turn into a "scorching hell" for any possible attackers.

Iran, according to experts, is believed to be at least four years away from finishing construction of the heavy-water reactor near Arak, in central Iran. Those reactors use natural uranium rather than the enriched form, which is costlier and more complicated to produce.

Asefi rejected a proposal by European negotiators to stop building the 40-megawatt Arak reactor in return for a light-water reactor.

"We welcome the European offer ... but this won't replace the heavy-water research reactor at all. That will continue. We will pursue that," he said.

Iran's top leaders have been adamant in recent days that Iran will not scrap its nuclear program, suspected by Washington as a program to produce a nuclear bomb.

Asefi said Iran has had long and intensive talks, which he described as "early steps forward," with Europeans. He said Europe should step up its efforts to justify continuing the negotiations.

"During the talks, we tried to make it open that the nuclear fuel cycle has economic justification and that we will continue our activities in this field," Asefi said.

Asefi also said Iran plans to become a major nuclear fuel supplier, part of a program that Iran says is for peaceful domestic energy purposes but Washington says is aimed at producing an atomic bomb.

"We intend to turn into an important and a major player in the nuclear fuel supply market in the next 15 years because there will be (an) energy shortage in the future," Asefi said.

Iran suspended uranium enrichment and all related activities in November, hoping to build trust and avoid U.N. Security Council sanctions. The International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna is monitoring the suspension.