Indications that hardliners within the Bush administration are (again) pushing for war with Iran casts new light on the recent alliance of convenience between the U.S. military and Sunni insurgents in Iraq. We’ve been highlighting for a while the administration’s penchant for implying that the deterioration of Iraqi politics isn’t as important as the U.S.-Sunni alliance against al-Qaeda. And there’s little doubt that the alliance is important, both for fighting al-Qaeda in Iraq and for the prospect of an Iran war spilling over into Iraq. It’s not inconceivable that our new Sunni allies of convenience would read the push for war with Iran as a green light to go after the Iraqi Shiites they view as Iran’s proxies, politically or militarily.
Throughout 2005, when U.S. military commanders met for talks with Sunni insurgents, one message the insurgents delivered, according to several sources of mine, was that the U.S. was handing Iraq over to the Iranians by allowing the Shiites to take power through elections. If the U.S. didn’t want to see Iran claim a hegemonic role in the region, said the insurgents, it had better return to its traditional posture of preferring Sunni rule in Iraq. Nor were insurgents the only ones articulating that fear: so were key Sunni allies of the U.S. in Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
Fast forward two years and the Bush administration’s premiere argument that the war is proceeding well is the cleavage between Sunni insurgents and al-Qaeda. Shiite political leaders, knowing that the Sunnis largely consider the Shiite-dominated government illegitimate, view the emergent Sunni-U.S. alliance with extreme concern. It’s only a matter of time, many reason, before the Sunni tribal figures and ex-insurgents attempt to reclaim Baghdad by force — something that they view as consistent with the U.S.’s hardening posture outside Iraq against the Iranians. It’s within that context that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, visiting Tehran last month, praised Iran’s “constructive role” in “fighting terrorism.” Sectarianism in Iraq is such that the U.S. inching closer to Sunni tribal leaders creates an incentive for Iraqi Shiite politicians to inch closer to the Iranians.
A crucial figure here is Ayad Allawi. In his recent op-ed urging the parliamentary overthrow of Maliki, Allawi castigated the Shiite-led government for not “telling Iran to end its interference in Iraqi affairs.” His efforts to catapult himself to the top of Iraqi politics, displacing the Shiites, have now won him the endorsement of both the Baath Party and Saleh Mutlaq, the ex-Baathist leader of one of the two Sunni parliamentary blocs. Allawi’s cardinal political effort to become premier is occurring in Washington, where he’s hired a GOP lobbying powerhouse to promote him as a non-sectarian force for stability and an enduring U.S.-Iraqi alliance. He’s cheered on comments by Democrats Hillary Clinton and Carl Levin that Maliki needs to go, which Sunnis probably read as auguring an inevitable split between the U.S. and its erstwhile, uneasy Shiite allies.
According to biographer Robert Draper, President Bush maintains support for Maliki even as his rule grows more tenuous. If Dick Cheney (a one-time advocate of backing the Shiites and Kurds against the Sunnis) and his allies are gunning for a war with Iran, they’ll have to convince Bush that the road to Tehran runs through Baghdad. That will be an argument that the U.S.’s new allies in Anbar Province — as well as its traditional ones in Riyadh and Amman — find very appealing.
