Mick Hartley

Roger Simon writes about ignoring the mainstream media when it comes to understanding what’s happening in Iraq, and checking out the Iraqi blogs. Currently it’s true I have no desire to watch the news: it doesn’t tell you much beyond detailing the number of loud bangs. Iraq the Model writes about the Shiite (“Shea’at): suppressed for so long under Saddam, now realising their strength but overplaying their hand:

The Shea’at in Iraq were divided nearly equally in their loyalty between Al-Sadir and Sistani. After the fall of Saddam the Shea’at on both parts found that democracy will give them their golden opportunity to take the lead in Iraq for the first time since the seventh century. The fanatic Shea’at started a muscle show allover Iraq and found lately that their dreams were very ambitious as it appeared that the democracy that is about to take place in Iraq, was not the dictatorship of the majority they were dreaming about. Instead the democracy that was presented to them and which they couldn’t refuse was a liberal democracy that gave all minorities their right to preserve their religious and ethnic identity. As this was obviously presented by the Kurdish parties and was approved by the GC, many Shea’at went mad. It was as if they were going to lose control over a territory that is theirs by law. They demonstrated, hanging posters showing their leaders and their legendary heroes allover Iraq, showed aggressiveness to those who opposed them, but they avoided violence. They were annoyed to be awakened from their vivid dreams in such a ‘vulgar’ way. During the course of their demonstrations and objections, and as no one opposed them on the streets, they overestimated their power and forgot who gave them their right place to talk, preach for their political programs in public and take their right place as the majority in Iraq. They forgot that this was only granted to them for the first time by the USA and as a result of her efforts in toppling Saddam and promoting democracy in Iraq.

This article (again via Roger Simon) points the finger at Iran:

Iranian agents have been commuting back and forth to and from Iraq regularly, using different border crossings along the 900-mile frontier with that country. Tehran has, for instance, used the Mandali-Monthariya border in February to send into Iraq a significant number of intelligence agents, who specialize in operations and roadside bombings against the coalition forces. It has also used other border crossing for such purposes.

Sources with access to firsthand information said that a roadside attack by a five-member team of Iraqi Muslim fundamentalists against a U.S. convoy in late February was actually tied to Iran. Other pro-Iranian Iraqi extremists were apparently involved in attacks against Iraqi police vehicles last month, these sources added.

As many as 30,000 people a night were reported to have crossed into Iraq from Iran, ostensibly to visit the holy Shiite shrines; many Iranian intelligence agents were among them. The Iranian regime’s intelligence units as well as the Qods (Jerusalem) Force of the Revolutionary Guards often pose as pilgrims and blend in with ordinary people who travel from Iran to the holy sites and other regions of Iraq.

After the U.S. forces arrested a number of Iranian agents, Tehran is relying increasingly on its newly-recruited Iraqi agents, particularly for intelligence gathering operations. It assigned a number of the recruits from Najaf, Karbala, Al-Kazimiyah, Basrah and Ba’qubah to Baghdad where they have set up new intelligence gathering cells.

Iran’s intelligence agents are actually working under the cover of local businesses in Iraq. Several Iranian intelligence agents came to the city of Al-Khalis, north of Baghdad, recently, to meet with their Iraqi counterparts. “Islamic Propaganda House” in Ba’qubah acts as cover for the Iranian regime’s intelligence agents.

Iranian agents have also been recently spotted in Baghdad, offering Iraqis large sums of money, as much as $25,000, in exchange for information. Iran has already sneaked in large amounts of weaponry including mortars, anti-aircraft missiles, and RPG-7 rocket launchers, providing them mostly to Iraqi surrogate groups.

It would be naïve to rely on the “goodwill” of Iranian clerics. To prevent Iraq from further sinking into chaos, the United States must take drastic action to curb Iranian influence by stopping the free flow of Iranian intelligence agents into Iraq and warning Tehran of the dire consequences of its continuing meddling in the affairs of its neighbor to the west. The ultimate solution, however, is for the United States to beat the Iranians at their own game by relying on the well-trained anti-fundamentalist Iranian opposition groups, which are working to unseat the clerics. This is not a luxury; it’s a prerequisite.