Juan Cole- The Second Iran-Iraq War and the American Switch // Simon Henderson - The Battle for Iraq Is a Saudi War on Iran // BBC: Iraq's most senior Shia cleric has issued a call to arms
Iran has decided to intervene directly in Iraq and has
already sent fighters to the front, according
to the Wall Street Journal, based on Iranian sources. It is alleged
that Iranian special forces have helped the Iraqi army push back in Tikrit, the
birth place of Saddam Hussein that was overrun earlier this week by ISIS , which captured the city’s police force. These
reports come on the heels of President Hassan Rouhani’s pledge on Thursday that
Iran would not stand by and
allow terrorists to take over Iraq .
The hyper-Sunni Islamic State of Iraq and Syria fighters are closing in on a
major Shiite shrine in Samarra and have pledge to take Baghdad, the capital,
itself.
Iraqi Shiites predominate in Baghdad and parts south. Shiites are more
like traditional Catholics in venerating members of the holy family and
attending at their shrines. Contemporary Salafi Sunni Islam is more like the
militant brand of Protestantism of the late 1500s that denounced intermediaries
between God and the individual and actually attacked and destroyed shrines to
saints and other holy figures, where pleas for intercession were made. The
shrine in Samarra
is associated with the 12th in the line of vicars of the Prophet Muhammad,
called Imams in Shi’ism, Muhammad al-Mahdi, a direct descendant of the Prophet
himself. Shiites have a special emphasis on a millenarian expectation that the
Twelfth Imam will soon return to restore justice to the world (rather as
Christians believe in the return of Christ). When the Samarra
shrine was damaged by Sunni militants in 2006, it threw Iraq into civil
war, in which 3000 civilians were being killed every month. Baghdad was ethnically cleansed by 2008 of
most of its Sunnis, becoming a largely Shiite capital. ISIS
wants to reverse that process. Baghdad
was founded by the Abbasid caliphate, who claimed to be vicars of the Prophet,
in 762 AD and is a symbol of the glories of early Islam. ISIS leaders are
threatening also to destroy the shrine of Ali in Najaf and the shrine of Husain
in Karbala
(Najaf for Shiites is the equivalent of the Basilica of St. Peter for
Catholics).
The specter of Iranian troops on Iraqi soil can only recall
the first Iran-Iraq War.
From September of 1980, when Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi army
invaded Iran ’s oil-rich Khuzistan Province ,
until summer 1988 when Ayatollah Khomeini finally accepted an armistice, Iran and Iraq
fought one of the Middle East ’s longest and
bloodiest wars. Its trench warfare and hidden naval encounters recalled the
horrors of World War I, as did the Iraqi Baath government’s deployment of
mustard gas against Iranian soldiers at the front and sarin gas against Kurdish
civilians suspected of pro-Iranian sentiments.
The Reagan administration in the United
States largely backed Iraq from 1983, when Reagan
dispatched then Searle CEO Donald Rumsfeld to shake Saddam’s hand. This,
despite Iraq being the clear aggressor and despite Reagan’s full knowledge of Iraqi
use of chemical weapons, about which George Schultz at the State Department
loudly complained until he was shushed. Then, having his marching orders
straight, Schultz had the US ambassador to the UN deep-six any UN Security
Council resolution condemning Iraq for the chemical weapons deployment. The US navy fought an behind the scenes war against
Iranian ships in the Persian Gulf , becoming a
de facto appendage of the Baath military.
Just because the Reagan administration was so Machiavellian,
it also gave some minor support Iran
in the war. Reagan stole anti-tank and anti-aircraft weaponry from the Pentagon
storehouses and illegally sold them to Khomeini despite Iran being on the US terrorism watch list. He then
had Iran pressure the Shiite
militiamen in Lebanon
to release American hostages. Reagan sent the money received from Iran to death squads in Nicaragua
fighting the people’s revolution there against a brutal American-installed
dictatorship. This money was sent to Nicaragua in defiance of the Boland
Amendment passed by Congress forbidding US monies to go there. Ollie North,
whom you see prevaricating on Fox News these days, was a bag man for the
operation... read more:
historically central to Saudi policy (is) a willingness to support radical Sunnis abroad while containing their activities at home. Hence Riyadh's arms-length support for Osama bin Laden when he was leading jihadists in Soviet-controlled Afghanistan, and tolerance for jihadists in Chechnya, Bosnia, and Syria.
June 12, 2014 "ICH" - "FP" - Be careful what you wish for could have been, and perhaps should have been,Washington 's advice to Saudi
Arabia and other Gulf states
which have been supporting Sunni jihadists against Bashar al-Assad's regime in Damascus . The warning is
even more appropriate today as the bloodthirsty fighters of the Islamic State
of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) sweep through northwest Iraq, prompting hundreds of
thousands of their Sunni coreligionists to flee and creating panic in Iraq's
Shiite heartland around Baghdad, whose population senses, correctly, that it
will be shown no mercy if the ISIS motorcades are not stopped.
June 12, 2014 "ICH" - "FP" - Be careful what you wish for could have been, and perhaps should have been,
Such a setback for Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has
been the dream of Saudi
Arabia 's King Abdullah for years. He has
regarded Maliki as little more than an Iranian stooge, refusing to send an
ambassador to Baghdad and instead encouraging
his fellow rulers of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) -- Kuwait , Bahrain ,
Qatar , the United Arab Emirates , and Oman -- to take
a similar standoff-ish approach. Although vulnerable to al Qaeda-types at home,
these countries (particularly Kuwait
and Qatar ) have often turned
a blind eye to their citizens funding radical groups like Jabhat al-Nusra, one
of the most active Islamist groups opposed to Bashar al-Assad in Syria .
Currently on vacation in Morocco , King Abdullah has so far
been silent on these developments. At 90-plus years old, he has shown no wish
to join the Twitter generation, but the developments on the ground could well
prompt him to cut short his stay and return home. He has no doubt realized that
-- with his policy of delivering a strategic setback to Iran by orchestrating the overthrow of Bashar
al-Assad in Damascus showing little sign of any
imminent success -- events in Iraq
offer a new opportunity.
This perspective may well confuse many observers. In recent
weeks, there has been a flurry of reports of an emerging - albeit reluctant - diplomatic rapprochement between the Saudi-led GCC and
Iran, bolstered by the apparently
drunken visit to Tehran by the emir of Kuwait, and visits by trade delegations and commerce ministers in one direction or the other. This
is despite evidence supporting the contrary view, including Saudi Arabia's
first public display of Chinese missiles capable of hitting Tehran and the
UAE's announcement of the introduction of military conscription for the country's youth.
The merit, if such a word can be used, of the carnage in Iraq is that at
least it offers clarity. There are tribal overlays and rival national
identities at play, but the dominant tension is the religious difference
between majority Sunni and minority Shiite Islam. This region-wide phenomenon
is taken to extremes by the likes of ISIS, which also likely sees its action in
Iraq
as countering Maliki's support for Assad.
Despite the attempts of many, especially in Washington , to write him
off, King Abdullah remains feisty, though helped occasionally by gasps of
oxygen -- as when President Barack Obama met him in March and photos emerged of
breathing tubes inserted in his nostrils. When Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, the
crown prince of Abu Dhabi
-- and, after his elder brother's recent stroke, the effective ruler of the UAE
-- visited King Abdullah on June 4, the Saudi monarch was shown gesticulating
with both hands. The subject under discussion was not revealed, but since Zayed
was on his way to Cairo it was probably the
election success of Egypt 's
new president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, considered a stabilizing force by Riyadh and Abu
Dhabi . Of course, Sisi gets extra points for being
anti-Muslim Brotherhood, a group whose Islamist credentials are at odds with
the inherited privileges of Arab monarchies. For the moment, Abdullah, Zayed,
and Sisi are the three main leaders of the Arab world. Indeed, the future path
of the Arab countries could well depend on these men (and whomever succeeds
King Abdullah).
For those confused by the divisions in the Arab world and
who find the metric of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" to be of
limited utility, it is important to note that the Sunni/Shiite divide
coincides, at least approximately, with the division between the Arab and
Persian worlds… read more:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article38780.htm
Who's to blame for Iraq crisis
Iraq disintegrating as insurgents advance toward capital; Kurds seize Kirkuk
Who's to blame for Iraq crisis
Iraq disintegrating as insurgents advance toward capital; Kurds seize Kirkuk
The call by a representative of Grand Ayatollah Ali
al-Sistani came during Friday prayers, as the militants widened their grip in
the north and east and threatened to march south.The UN says hundreds have been killed - with militants
carrying out summary executions of civilians in Mosul . The US and Iran
have promised to help the fight against the insurgency. Led by the Islamic State in Iraq
and the Levant (ISIS), the insurgents have threatened to push to the capital, Baghdad and regions further south dominated by Iraq 's Shia Muslim majority, including the holy
cities of Najaf and Karbala
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-27834462Algeria: For Aziz Smati on Valentine’s Day
