L’Iran mantiene una certa influenza su alcuni
partiti sciiti che hanno attualmente il controllo nel sud dell’Irak. I
funzionari iraniani lasciano intendere che qualsiasi azione militare contro il
nucleare iraniano avrà conseguenze nell’arena irachena
- Nawaf Obaid, analista sulla sicurezza e consigliere
di Turki al-Faysal, l’ambasciatore dell’Arabia Saudita a Washington, ha
avvertito che il ritiro delle forze statunitensi dall’Arabia Saudita
potrebbe spingere la stessa Arabia Saudita a dare contributi finanziari,
armi e rifornimenti alle milizie sunnite irachene per controbilanciare il sostegno
iraniano a quelle sciite.
Qualche giorno dopo
queste affermazioni, Obaid è stato dimesso dal suo posto di consigliere. Aveva
ovviamente toccato un nervo scoperto.
Secondo esperto CIA
Arabia già fornisce un qualche sostegno ai salafiti iracheni e forse anche al
Partito Islamico (sunnita) iracheno.
Già nel 2004 il capo
del Consiglio Supremo della Magistratura saudita, lo sceicco Saleh Luhaidan,
era stato filmato in una moschea statale mentre incoraggiava dei giovani
sauditi ad andare in Iraq a fare la guerra santa contro gli americani.
- L’Iran mantiene una certa influenza su alcuni partiti
sciiti che hanno attualmente il controllo nel sud dell’Irak. I funzionari
iraniani lasciano intendere che qualsiasi azione militare contro il
nucleare iraniano avrà conseguenze nell’arena irachena. Allo stesso tempo,
si sono lamentati del fatto che l’Arabia Saudita sta attuando in Iran una
guerra silenziosa per l’influenza in Irak, anche attraverso finanziamenti nella
provincia a maggioranza araba del Khuzestan per spingere gli abitanti alla
conversione dall’Islam sciita a quello sunnita.
- “La guerra fredda mediorientale sta spingendo
Washington, alleato con gli arabi conservatori, in una posizione
contraddittoria in Irak, avendo insediato qui un governo sciita pro-Iran
ma rimanendo incapaci di lavorare con questa nuova realtà a livello
geopolitico”, afferma Juan Cole, il principale osservatore dell’Irak nel
mondo accademico statunitense.
- Definendo l’Iran l’ “asse del male”, accusandolo di
destabilizzare l’Irak e sponsorizzando un “asse sciita” nella regione, gli
Usa hanno spaventato i fedeli sunniti arabi, l’Arabia Saudita e la
Giordania. Non deve quindi stupire che nel mondo arabo siano suscitate accuse
di tradimento mentre la Casa Bianca sta pensando di cambiare linea e
invita l’Iran come pacificatore in Irak. - La nuova dirigenza in Iran ha fatto poco per evitare
il confronto, a parte proposte retoriche rasserenanti verso i suoi vicini
arabi. Ahmadinejad non ha proseguito i successi diplomatici effettuati dal
suo predecessore moderato Khatami. Dove Khatami aveva invitato il re
saudita Abdullah a Tehran e ospitato un vertice di successo
dell’Organizzazione del Congresso Islamico nel ’98, Ahmadinejad ha
accresciuto la percezione di vulnerabilità degli arabi. Mettendo in
rilievo le tendenze anti-monarchiche e populiste che pervadono lo Sciismo,
con le sue dichiarazioni scioviniste-persiane Ahmadinejad ha rimesso a
fuoco uno scontro tra Repubblica Islamica e i regni del Golfo Persico che
era stato allentato. - All’inizio del mese, la massima autorità nazionale
della sicurezza iraniana, Ali Larijani, ha consigliato agli arabi di
espellere i militari statunitensi dalle loro basi nella regione e di
unirsi a Tehran in una alleanza di sicurezza regionale. Sono state
affermazioni senza precedenti, e segno di una maggior fiducia dell’Iran
nella propria potenza. Ulteriore prova del fatto che il messaggio di
Tehran è stato tenuto in considerazione anche dalle capitali dei minuscoli
alleati degli Usa come Qatar, Kuwait e Emirati Arabi Uniti, è stata la
loro non partecipazione alle recenti manovre guidate dagli Usa nel Golfo
calibrate per mandare un avvertimento alla Repubblica Islamica. - Come il Libano è resuscitato come campo di battaglia
per procura delle potenze regionali, l’Irak sta diventando sempre più il
“Libano dell’Est.”
Iraq
heading the Lebanon way
By Iason Athanasiadis
TEHRAN – The recent
saga of Nawaf Obaid, a
security analyst and adviser to Turki al-Faysal, the Saudi ambassador to Washington, is instructive
about the trepidation currently felt by Iraq’s neighbors
over its future. In a published opinion piece, Obaid warned that the withdrawal of US forces from Saudi Arabia might prompt the Saudi leadership to give funds, arms
and supplies to Iraq‘s Sunni militias as a way of countering Tehran‘s support for Iraqi Shi’ite militias.
The article raised a storm of Saudi official protest. The Saudi Press Agency, a
government entity, pointed out that Obaid’s article does "not represent in
any way the kingdom’s policy". Just to be sure, it added the caveat that Riyadh’s policy is
"to support the security, unity and stability of Iraq with all its
sects and doctrines". A
few days later, Obaid was dismissed from his advisory post. He had obviously
touched a raw nerve.
"Saudi
Arabia has been, mostly unofficially, supporting Sunni Islamist movements
around the world for a long time with the philosophy that their money buys them
some minimal influence and even immunity from criticism from them," said
Graham Fuller, the former vice chair of the National Intelligence Council at
the US Central Intelligence Agency. "I have no information about what the
kingdom is doing in Iraq, but almost
certainly they are in touch with and aiding to some extent the Salafis and
maybe the Islamic Party of Iraq as well."
With barely any inquiry by the Western media into US ally Saudi Arabia’s role in Iraq, it is not
peculiar that Riyadh’s relationship
with Sunni political groups in Iraq has gone
unremarked upon. But as early as 2004, Sheikh Saleh al-Luhaidan, the chief
justice of Saudi Arabia’s Supreme
Judicial Council, was caught on videotape at a government mosque encouraging
young Saudis to go to Iraq and wage jihad
against the Americans.
"The lawfulness of his action is in fighting an enemy who is fighting
Muslims and came for war," Luhaidan was heard saying on the tape.
Last week, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani visited Tehran and was quoted
by Iranian state television as saying his country is in dire need of Tehran’s help in
establishing security and stability in Iraq. Meanwhile, the
Iraq Study Group proposed that Iran and Syria be engaged by
the US government on Iraq’s future.
"Were the Americans or any outside forces to exit Iraq, the weapons that
the factions have, along with the free-for-all that is prevalent in most of
Iraq now, will simply result in a chaotic bloodbath," Abdurrahman al-Shayyal,
a Saudi analyst, told Asia Times Online.
Iran holds some sway over a number of the Shi’ite
political parties currently controlling southern Iraq. Iranian officials have been hinting that any US military strike against Iran‘s nuclear program would have consequences in the
Iraqi arena. At the same time, they have privately complained that Saudi Arabia is taking the silent war for influence in Iraq into Iran as well by pumping money into the Arab-majority province of Khuzestan by encouraging locals to convert from Shi’ite to
Sunni Islam.
Iran and Saudi Arabia are both flush
with near-record oil receipts and intent on continuing their confrontation for
regional dominance. Iran is a regionally
resurgent Shi’ite theocracy, while Saudi Arabia stands as the
self-proclaimed champion of Sunni Islam and views Iran as a regional
and religious trespasser.
"The Middle Eastern Cold War
is pushing Washington, allied with the Arab conservatives, into a contradictory
stance in Iraq, having installed a Shi’ite, pro-Iranian government there but
remaining unable to work with this new reality on a geopolitical level,"
opined Juan Cole, the foremost Iraq watcher in US academia. "Iraq is caught in
the middle of this new Cold War and seems likely to be the major victim of
it."
A month ago, I interviewed a childhood friend of Iranian President Mahmud
Ahmadinejad in his office in Tehran’s sprawling and
polluted downtown. At our last interview just before the summer he had appeared
an enthusiastic proponent of his friend’s presidency. This time, however, he
was full of complaints.
"Ahmadinejad is demolishing all these efforts that [former president
Mohammad] Khatami made to allay the Arabs’ fears of us. He believes that Iran has to be a
superpower and does not like the Arab sheikhdoms because he is anti-royalty. So
he is returning the revolution [of 1979] to where we started, and it has taken
27 years to assure [the Arab states that] we are not a threat."
Listing Iran as a member of an "axis of evil" and
accusing it, despite the absence of published evidence, of destabilizing Iraq and sponsoring a "Shi’ite axis" across the
wider region have terrified staunch Arab Sunni allies such as Saudi Arabia and Jordan. So it is unremarkable that cries of treason are
elicited from the Arab world when the White House considers changing tack and
invites Iran into Iraq to pacify it. On a September trip to Syria, it was clear
that even the policymakers of this closest of Iranian allies were less than
jubilant over the prospect of Iranian influence lapping against their eastern
borders.
The US invasion of Iraq forever
demolished the regional security architecture that prevailed in the 1980s and
contributed to a stable, investment-free Persian Gulf region. Iraqi
strongman Saddam Hussein is no longer the cork in the Sunni bottle, protecting
Arab states from the spread of Iranian influence. Nor is Iran the boxed-in,
under-fire country it was in the first years after the revolution, when Sunni
Arab money kept Iraq’s war machine
oiled and on the offensive against the nascent Islamic Republic. It was Saddam
Hussein’s aggression against Iran in September
1980 that sparked the bloody Iran-Iraq War that claimed an estimated 1 million
victims in horrific trench warfare over eight years.
Iran‘s new leadership has done little to avert confrontation aside from
making soothing rhetorical overtures toward its Arab neighbors. Ahmadinejad has
not repeated the diplomatic success effected by his moderate predecessor
Khatami. Where Khatami invited Saudi Arabia‘s King Abdullah to Tehran and hosted a successful meeting of the Organization
of the Islamic Conference in 1998, Ahmadinejad’s Persian chauvinist utterances
have heightened the Arabs’ perceptions of vulnerability. By stressing the
anti-royalist, populist strains that run through Shi’ism, Ahmadinejad has
refocused a confrontation between the Islamic Republic and the Persian Gulf‘s kingdoms that had been in remission.
But
there is little the oil-rich but politically fragile and sparsely populated Persian Gulf monarchies can
do against a muscular, security-centered Iran numbering 70
million and intent on assuming leadership of the region. Early this month, Iran‘s national-security supremo, Ali Larijani, counseled
the Arabs to eject the US military from its bases in the region and join Tehran in a regional security alliance. It was an
unprecedented statement and a sign of Iran‘s growing confidence in its might. Further proof that
Tehran‘s message is being heard in the capitals of minuscule
US allies such as Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates was their non-participation in recent US-led
maneuvers in the Gulf that were calibrated to send a warning to the Islamic
Republic.
Iran’s official
entry into Iraq – even if only
diplomatic – would create a perception of threat and escalate that country’s
travails. Just as Lebanon is today being resurrected as the proxy battleground
for a host of regional powers, Iraq is increasingly turning into a "Lebanon of the east".
Iason Athanasiadis is an Iran-based correspondent.