Posted by
INTHENOW on Wednesday, April 02, 2008 12:43:39 PM
A massive battle broke out between two Shiite factions in Iraq. One, led by Abdel Aziz al-Hakim who effectively controls Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki due to the small size and fractured nature of al-Maliki’s party confronted the faction led by Muqtada al-Sadr. Clearly, this was an attempt by the dominant Shiite faction to finally deal with the wild card of Iraqi Shiite politics. By the weekend, al-Sadr had capitulated. Backed into a corner by overwhelming forces, apparently backed by U.S. military force, al-Sadr effectively sued for peace.
Al-Sadr’s decision to lay down arms was heavily influenced by the Iranians. We would go further and say the decision to have al-Sadr submit to a government dominated by his Shiite rivals was a decision made with Iranian agreement. The Iranians had been restraining al-Sadr for a while, taking him to Tehran and urging him to return to the seminary to establish his clerical credentials. The Iranians did not want to see a civil war among the Iraqi Shia. A split among the Shia at a time of increasing Sunni unity and cooperation with the United States would open the door to a strategically unacceptable outcome for Iran: a pro-American government heavily dominated by Sunnis with increasing military power as the Shia are fighting among themselves.
The Americans also didn’t want this outcome. While the Iranians had restrained al-Sadr at the beginning of the U.S. surge and thereby massively contributed to the end of the strategy of playing the Sunnis against the Shia Tehran had not yet dealt with al-Sadr decisively. Just like Iran, the United States prefers not to see a new Sunni government emerge in Iraq. Instead, Washington wants a balance of power in Baghdad between Sunnis, Shia and Kurds, and it wants intra-communal disputes to be contained within this framework. If a stable government is to emerge, each of the communities must be relatively (with an emphasis on “relatively”) stable. Thus, not for the first time, American and Iranian interests in Iraq were aligned. Both wanted an end to Shiite conflict, and that meant that both wanted al-Sadr to capitulate.
This is the point where U.S. and Iranian interests can diverge. The Iranians have a fundamental decision to make, and what happens now in Iraq is almost completely contingent upon what the Iranians decide. They can do three things. First, they can hold al-Sadr in reserve as a threat to stability if things don’t go their way. Second, they can use the relative unity of the Shia to try to impose an anti-Sunni government in Baghdad. And third, they can participate in the creation of that government.
We have long argued that the Iranians would take the third option. They certainly appeared to be cooperating in the last week. But it has not been clear what the U.S. government thought, partly because they have been deliberately opaque in their thinking on Iran, and partly because the situation was too dynamic. STRATFOR 01 Apr 08