Bush's Iraq Policy: Giving Aid and Comfort to the Enemy?

Brian Doherty | November 16, 2006

The enemy in Iran, that is. This report from today's LA Times indicates that, despite their official calls to continue to drive the infidel from Iraq, yada yada, there are signs that the Iranian powers-that-be are afraid of what a U.S. troopless Iraq will mean. An excerpt:

On Tuesday night, Tehran's English-language news channel featured commentary from political scientist Pirouz Mojtahedzadeh, who called for the U.S. to remain in Iraq until it has established a strong, stable central government capable of providing adequate security.

"The Americans can't simply withdraw from Iraq, leaving the mess as it is," Mojtahedzadeh said in a telephone interview from the Iranian capital afterward. "Who's going to look for the safety of the Iraqis there? The Iranians can't do it. The Turks can't do it…. This is not a question of political rivalry between Iran and the West. It has to do with the fact that the society has to have a government structure in place."

Analysts familiar with official thinking say there is growing support for views like Mojtahedzadeh's within Iran's professional foreign policy establishment, if not within the hard-line circles closest to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad....

"They've not said it directly and openly as an official policy line, that they'd like the U.S. to stay, but I think there's a sense among the Iranians that they understand that the U.S. cannot just leave immediately," said Hadi Semati, an Iranian political analyst who is a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Whole story.

Comments

Mr Obvious|11.16.06 @ 12:14PM|#

crazy talk. how can we be expected to invade iran if we're held down in the menial task of controling iraq?

|11.16.06 @ 12:46PM|#

I think the story here is why there is such a thing as "Teheran's English-language news channel." Obviously it's more than a mouthpiece for the mullahs. What else does it show?

|11.16.06 @ 12:55PM|#

"there are signs that the Iranian powers-that-be are afraid of what a U.S. troopless Iraq will mean"

If one wishes to posit a theory that doesn't depend upon the Iranian government adopting an altruistic concern for Iraqi Arabs as a central plank of its foreign policy, one could view this as evidence that our Iraq adventure is advancing the interests of Iran, and of its theocratic leaders, so effectively that they don't want it to end.

One could go so far as to suggest that the damage the war is doing to us militarily, economically, psychologically, and diplomatically is in the interest of the Iranian regime, and they wish to see us do ourselves further damage.

|11.16.06 @ 12:55PM|#

I think we' better to get Chalabi on the phone to tell us what this all means.

|11.16.06 @ 1:40PM|#

Couldn't this just be a matter of fearing an unencumbered US military or an unfettered Kurdish or Sunni militia rather than actually worrying about an "unstable" Iraq?

It's not like there will be a flood of Iraqi refugees flooding their borders. Despite the catastrophic violence, it is Iran that is the economic basket case, not Iraq.

|11.16.06 @ 2:07PM|#

am I hopelessly naive to find this reassuring?

|11.16.06 @ 2:11PM|#

Iran: "Yes, please stay in Iraq, so we can continue to orchestrate a low-level proxy war against you there."

|11.16.06 @ 2:12PM|#

I thought the Iranian president wanted the three Iraq solution partly because it has something to do with beingt a sign that the mahdi or hidden imam or Paul maud'dib is returning?

|11.16.06 @ 2:20PM|#

Maybe I'm naive, but could Iranians actually care about the well being of Iraqis? I know it sounds crazy but is it unreasonable to think that these guys have any human feelings at all at least to their fellow Muslims?

Bring the troops home and let Iran try to put down the Sunni insurgency.

|11.16.06 @ 2:42PM|#

B.P.,

"Inshallah, we will fight them in Basra, so we won't have to fight them in Bam."

|11.16.06 @ 2:48PM|#

"Oh, yes, Uncle Sam, you just keep fighting that tar baby. Just keep hitting him and punching him until he behaves himself."

|11.16.06 @ 3:20PM|#

This is just the "terrorists have already won" argument in reverse. Iranians want us to stay in Iraq, so therefore we should leave?

I mean, we should leave, but that's not among the good reasons for doing so.

That said, I guess it's a good sign for American poltical discourse that the reactionary pendulum is starting to swing the other way.

|11.16.06 @ 3:22PM|#

...But it would be better if both sides would just stop accusing each other of helping the enemy.

|11.16.06 @ 3:38PM|#

I'm convinced that Iranian Intelligence played us like chumps - Curveball and Chalabi. Like some neighborhood bullies who convince the retarded kid on the block to take a whack at a wasp nest.

|11.16.06 @ 3:44PM|#

Nice handle.

|11.16.06 @ 3:57PM|#

I'm with de stijl. One look at the suits Chalabi wears should have been enough to convince everyone he was a playa, but he like all good con men, he told gullible people what they wanted most to hear.

You know, by the time Hitler's forces crossed the frontier, Stalin was so determined that the people warning him about an impending attack were lying that the refused to believe his field officers when they said they were under attack. If you go back to 2001 or 2002 issues of National Review, you can see the same thing - the mere act of treating Ahmed Chalabi as unreliable (as the State Department and CIA did) was treated as proof that they were dishonest and incompetant. As evidence of Chalabi's dishonesty came forward, all it did was make them shoot the messenger.

He played this administraion like chumps, and the only saving grace is that he's problably just playing his Iranian backers for chumps, too.

|11.17.06 @ 1:55AM|#

<em>One look at the suits Chalabi wears should have been enough to convince everyone he was a playa, </em>

Don't hate the playa, hate the game.

And BTW, Christopher Hitchens still believes in me.

|11.17.06 @ 4:21AM|#

Or maybe, just maybe, they figure that the Syrians, the Saudis the Kuwaitis, the Jordanians, and the Turks will be putting money and their people in Iraq. Without the US putting anykind of a lid on it.

They would need to put their money and their forces in there to act as a counterbalance. And of course they would be overwhelemd. They don't have the money or the recources to compete with all the other countries.

oldnumberseven|11.17.06 @ 1:28PM|#

Hell, it would not surprise me if George Bush was in the pay of Iran this entire time. Everything we have done in the middle east during this war has benefited Iran.