Archive for the 'Iran' Category

India has long been very wary of the Taliban, having fought Islamic extremists in the Kashmir region for years. Hence, they knew long before the U.S. did that political and security problems would cast doubt on the supply of arms and other military materiel to NATO forces in Afghanistan. Karachi is the next target of the Tehrik-i-Taliban, and it is the port city of entry for NATO supplies. We predicted Karachi would be at risk months ago. India also stands to lose with the ascendancy of the Taliban, i.e., India itself is at risk. So India has been busy, but on what?

KABUL, August 07, 2008 (AFP) - India has almost completed a key road linking Afghanistan to Iranian sea ports despite Taliban attacks that claimed more than 100 lives in two years, the deputy public works minister said.

The 217-kilometre (134-mile) route connects a nearly completed ring road around Afghanistan to the Iranian port cities of Bandar-i-Abas and Chabahar, the official told AFP.

Eight Indian engineers and more than 100 Afghan workers were killed in Taliban attacks since the construction of the road began more than two years ago, said Minister Wali Mohammad Rasouli.

There were a few sections of route that had to be touched up before a handing over ceremony was held in a few weeks, he said.

Landlocked Afghanistan relies mostly on Pakistan’s port of Karachi for goods arriving by sea, including supplies for the nearly 70,000 international soldiers helping to fight a Taliban-led insurgency.

The road was initially budgeted at 80 million dollars but is reported to have cost 185 million dollars, in part because of the high security risks of operating in southern Afghanistan.

The route, already open to traffic, is a welcome alternative, since goods can sometimes be held up on alternate routes from Pakistan, where they are also often subjected to high taxes, Rasouli said.

“The new road is very important for us,” he said. “Now we have an alternative road to use when Pakistan creates problems and obstacles for our traders on their ports.”

Islamabad also does not allow goods from India — its enemy — to transit through Pakistan into Afghanistan.

Kabul has a good relationship with New Delhi, one of the main financers of its efforts to rebuild from decades of war although it has not sent troops to join the international military effort against the resurgent Taliban.

However its ties with Islamabad are strained, notably over the unrest.

Kabul alleges that elements in Pakistan, including its government, are supporting the Taliban. Islamabad was one of only three countries that recognised the 1996-2001 Taliban regime.

A road to Iran. This is truly bizarre. A sworn enemy of the U.S. and perpetrator of all manner of anti-Western military operations through its proxy Syria and Hezbollah, the idea that Iran would ever knowingly allow support for NATO forces in Afghanistan to transit through its borders, while also actively working for the defeat of the very same forces in both Afghanistan and Iraq, calls this report into serious suspicion. If it’s true, it isn’t readily apparent why India would have worked for such a road.

It would have been easier to secure disputed areas of Kashmir (or construct air fields to supply NATO via flights over the Northern region of Kashmir) than to get Iranian agreement to assist NATO forces in Afghanistan. To make this report make any sense whatsoever requires a better analyst than The Captain’s Journal. We believe that India has wasted its time and money.

Baseball is a wonderful sport. Field of Dreams is among the best movies ever made. There is a correlation between life on the diamond and life in the real world; there are many parallels. But among the best plays ever, which happens on very rare occasions, is the triple play. As a teen, I was able to experience it only a couple of times during summer league. In the real world lately, it seems as though we are on the verge of a big time triple play. Only this is not a game.

I thought it fitting this week to call this article “Triple Play.” It’s been a busy three days around here. Just so all of you know what I’m talking about, my son and his wife became the parents of three boys on Monday the 23rd. That’s right, triplets. Jesse, Jacob and James arrived between 1018 hrs and 1022 hrs on Monday morning. They came early, but it was expected that would happen. My son, the US Army Helicopter pilot and his wife are rather beside themselves at what now is a daunting task ahead of them. But with much care, assistance from family, and lots of prayer, all will be fine. It is just a long road ahead that will be traveled one step at a time.

In other news this week….the Bush administration seemed to have upped the tempo a bit about going for its own triple play. As things heat up continually in Afghanistan, most recently due to the blazing jail house attack that freed 1100 or so “bad guys” including around 400 Taliban fighters, lots of attention has been in that direction by the media. And, just as Iraq is being reported to sustain immense security improvements  in the past year, and definitely such is the case, only last night more casualties were reported with the loss of three US Army soldiers in Mosul by IED. And still yet, another report this week told of meetings between US and Israeli officials who were said to have discussed the option of attacking Iran. Israel has recently been doing high profile maneuvers and letting the word out that it has no intention of letting Iran have nuclear capabilities. US officials are said to have been urging restraint on Israel’s part, however most observers have concluded that joint planning for such an attack is already in the works. And there you have it folks, out at first, out at second, and perhaps out at third. We’ll see.

But for the record, my job as a catcher was to cover home plate, no matter what the consequences.  What I enjoyed most about being a catcher on the field was that I had to know every possible scenario for each and every pitch that was thrown to the batter. I had to know it before it was thrown, and be prepared for whatever transpired. As I mentioned earlier, there are many parallels between baseball and real life. And herein lies the point of this writing.

I’ve never forgotten about how it was that we went into Afghanistan back in 2001, which seems like a life-time ago. It was the first time as a father I experienced having my own son sent to war. It was only a couple of months after having just lost our oldest son, a Marine. Things were still very raw. Then, in 2003, the nation saw fit to go back into Iraq and finish something that had twelve years earlier been incomplete. It was the second time as a father I saw my son off to war. And now, it’s mid 2008, and I look towards the horizon and see storm clouds brewing once again, only the target is Iran. I know once again, should the commander in chief tell my son to “saddle up,” my son would be ready in a heartbeat for his fifth deployment in the past seven years, only this time, the next generation on deck, would be awaiting his return.

It is a very difficult play, the triple play, but it can be pulled off, but not without perfect coordination and excellent timing. And remember, it is very rarely pulled off successfully, something akin to triplet boys being born naturally without using any artificial measures.

Covering home plate, the catcher must be willing to hold onto the ball and never drop it, even when some opponent is barreling around third racing to plow into the catcher as he awaits the throw from his teammates to tag the runner out before he scores. Never let the opponent score and the last line of defense is the one covering home plate. Such is the case in this global triple play that is possibly about to take place. There were lots of errors leading up to the events of 9/11. After the disaster of the twin towers, we as a nation, and rightly so, embarked upon an “easy out” on first. Come to find out, the cave dwellers weren’t so stupid as we suspected, errors were made at Tora Bora, and just when we thought the bottom of the ninth was going to end the game, we’ve all been witness to many extra innings.

There were severe errors made leading up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, at least that is what many believe these days in 2008. Then, once again, when we all thought the bottom of the 9th was in view, like the banner telling us, “Mission Accomplished,” it became clear that it had gone into extra innings.  That brings us to today.

I remember living in Australia for a few years when my kids were little. They learned the sports games down under, which I never could actually figure out completely. The closest thing to baseball was cricket. What I couldn’t stand about cricket was the fact that the game took an unbelievable amount of time to play, sometimes days, just for one game. It made no sense to me. I think I can speak for the rest of the fans covering home plate across the nation when I say, “if we’re going to another game, I hope it does not go into extra innings.”

A good catcher hones his skills by learning from all the errors made in previous games. I figure that’s one reason there’s 162 games in a professional baseball season. There is a real possibility that Iran has pushed the envelope too damn far. In many respects, I feel they’ve crossed the line way more than once. I don’t want to see extra innings anymore. I love having triplet grandsons now. And I always liked being a part of a successful triple play as a young baseball player. But if we go to war directly with Iran, even though we’ve already been fighting them in the streets of Iraq for many years, those in charge, all the way up the chain of command, better execute it perfectly this time, for if they don’t, there just may not be a next season.  I for one will cover home plate with my entire body, soul and spirit, whatever betides.

Jim Spiri
Jimspiri@yahoo.com

Writing for Foxnews, Alireza Jafarzadeh has an article entitled Shiite Awakening in Iraq Targets Tehran.  His commentary is important and bears reiterating here before we analyze it.

Over the weekend — while the EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana was in Tehran making headlines with yet another incentive package offered by China, France, Germany, Britain and Russia and the United States — three million Shiites in Iraq were making another, more important “Iran headline.” United Press International reported from Baghdad that “More than 3 million Iraqi Shiites signed a petition sponsored by the leaders of the People’s Mujahedin [MEK] of Iran opposing Iranian influence in Iraqi affairs.”

“Expulsion of all members and agents of the Iranian regime’s IRGC, Intelligence, and the terrorist Qods Force from all governmental or non-governmental institutions of Iraq, especially the security systems and the police,” the declaration demanded.

UPI added that “The declaration, which also called for the lifting of a measure curtailing the activity of the MEK in Ashraf City in eastern Iraq, was announced at the fourth conference for the Solidarity Congress of the Iraqi People” held in Ashraf City, Iraq. The Congress was attended by “Several Iraqi politicians from the Sunni Islamic Party of Iraq of Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, the Islamic Unity Party and several other blocs, including the Iraqi Accordance Front,” according to UPI.

The development has wide-ranging implications for Iraq and for the volatile debate over Iran policy in Washington and other western capitals.

For a long time, a myth essentially manufactured in Tehran has been making the rounds in policy circles on both sides of the Atlantic, according to which the situation in Iraq must be viewed in the framework of Sunni vs. Shiite. More specifically, it is argued that Iran has the ultimate sway over Iraq’s Shiites, and any firm countermeasure against Tehran’s meddling risks prodding the ayatollahs into unleashing the Shiite population and plunging Iraq into bloody civil war for years to come. In support of this misguided argument, some pundits are saying if you think things are bad now, just imagine the mayhem if Iran brings its army of Iraqi Shiites to the streets.

This is a false prophecy. It has nevertheless hampered the formulation of an effective policy or plan to neutralize Tehran’s inroads in Iraq. That failure has dire consequences as it will enable Tehran to make further inroads in Iraq and consolidate its domination of that country.

The reality is that Tehran’s sway over Iraqi Shiites is limited to its proxies, who have infiltrated all spheres of the Iraqi government and Southern provinces. They are augmented by an army of well paid mercenaries, operating within and without the government in various terrorist groups which are financed, trained, and armed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ Qods Force. In the streets of the Shiite cities and neighborhoods, ordinary Iraqis describe the ayatollahs’ meddling as the “poison from the East.”

The scope of the Shiite opposition goes far beyond the 3 million signatories, because unlike petitions signed on the corners of K Street in Washington, these Iraqis and their families could very well pay with their blood for such a public and emphatic rebuke of Tehran.

Last April in an opinion piece in the Boston Globe, Dr. Saleh al-Mutlaq, the head of the influential Iraqi Front for National Dialogue, and a member of the Iraqi Parliament, charged the al-Maliki government “was caving in to pressure from Iran to make life difficult for the MEK.” He wrote that “the MEK people enjoy popular support inside Iraq, particularly in Diyala province, where they have worked to promote reconciliation between Sunni and Shiite communities.”

The landmark declaration signed by three million Shiites also has a clear message for Washington: Iraqi Shiites reject the false assertions of those who have been speaking on their behalf. They are telling Washington to stand firm and confront Iran’s meddling, without fear of a Shiite backlash.

This is an important article and warrants some serious reflection.  The Captain’s Journal agrees with Jafarzadeh, and has called for the dismantling of Iranian forces and diminution of Iranian influence in Iraq so many times that it is not possible to find and link all of our articles.  We have no fear of a Shi’ite backlash, whether it happens or not.  As students of counterinsurgency are quick to point out, winning and losing are concepts that must be replaced with a spectrum acceptable outcomes.

Let’s be clear.  An empowered Iran is not an acceptable outcome of Operation Iraqi Freedom.  This “awakening” of sorts is a good step.  But more important than the seeds of a Shi’ite awakening is the most significant name missing from the list of proponents.

The name is Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, one time military leader of Badr and now head of Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council.  The Captain’s Journal mistrusts him as much as we do Sadr, and maybe more so, since Sadr at least makes his sentiments and intentions known.  Hakim has managed to play the political game well enough to be befriended by the administration, both in the U.S. and Iraq.

But he is no friend of a strong, sovereign Iraq.  Rather, he is in the hip pocket of the Iranians.  And there is a huge difference between the Sunni awakening and the Shi’ite awakening to which Jafarzadeh refers, and he alludes to this difference in his very article.

The reality is that Tehran’s sway over Iraqi Shiites is limited to its proxies, who have infiltrated all spheres of the Iraqi government and Southern provinces. They are augmented by an army of well paid mercenaries, operating within and without the government in various terrorist groups which are financed, trained, and armed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ Qods Force. In the streets of the Shiite cities and neighborhoods, ordinary Iraqis describe the ayatollahs’ meddling as the “poison from the East.”

Poison it is.  And Hakim knows just who the IRG and Quds are.  He knows names, persons, locations, caches, routes of supply, training camps, and all manner of things that makes Iran powerful in Iraq.  The Sunni awakening was a true awakening, where common people rose up against a brutal enemy - al Qaeda.  Neither side was embedded within the government like the tick that is Hakim and the SIIC.

Only time will tell whether the common people rising up against the continuing Iranian influence (including the SIIC) will be enough.  Unlike al Qaeda, the SIIC is embedded within the Iraqi system.  Hakim himself could rise up against Iran and repudiate their influence, demanding his followers do the same.  Will he?  It’s Doubtful.  He belongs to Iran, and there has been absolutely no stomach with Maliki or the U.S. advisers to pressure Hakim regarding his alignment with Iran.

As the negotiating continues over a replacement agreement for the U.N. mandate (in which Iraq and the U.S. are “partners” in Iraq security), there are reports that Iraq is refusing to grant the U.S. immunity from Iraqi laws, rejecting the right of U.S. forces to operate free and independently (and without Iraqi approval), and refusing to grant use of Iraqi skies and waterways at all times.

Iraq knows that it needs U.S. troops, and Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari has said that negotiations are not dead from their perspective, even though PM Maliki has said that there is an impasse.  Making sense of the situation takes on the characteristics of the presuppositions taken to the analysis.  Or better stated, our paradigm dictates the outcome of our thought game.

Nibras Kazimi, who is a very smart Iraq analyst and doesn’t mind telling us so, has said little about this subject, partly because he has a huge blind spot.  One might have been left to wonder why he was so giddy at the failure of the Sunni insurgency.  His background comes out in his analysis, and his blind spot is Iran.  Dr iRack at Abu Muqawama (or Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution) has a lot to say about this subject, here and elsewhere.

Says O’Hanlon, among a great many other things, “Maliki’s government could call our bluff and cave into (sic) the delusion that they don’t need us.”  Kazimi, discussing the campaign in the Maysan province, naively says that it is Iran’s last stand in Iraq.  O’Hanlon chooses to dissect Iraqi politics to the nth degree of precision, yet ignores the Iranian influence.

Approximately two years ago The Captain’s Journal warned an officer that the Sunni insurgency would be defeated, but without the equivalent defeat of the Sadrists and the full blown incorporation of the SIIC into the Iraqi mainstream (including their rejection of Iran), the Iranian Ayatollahs would have their forces deployed in both Lebanon and Iraq.  Iran will have been made supreme in the Middle East.

This officer - a thinking man - promised to save this in his AKO account.  We maintain our position.  The situation warrants neither naive jocularity nor precise political analysis.  The Iranians are furious over the proposed security plan, and it is precisely because of their plans for regional hegemony.  Syrian analyst Sami Moubayed goes further.

A popular Iraqi joke speaks of an aged man who marries a young girl many years his junior, called Mana. Whenever he visits his young bride, she complains that his long beard has become too white, and plucks out its white hair. The next day, he visits his first wife Hana, who is his age, and she complains that the remaining black hairs do not compliment him, plucking them out as well. He eventually ends up with no beard, and miserably speaks to himself in front of the mirror saying, “Between Hana and Mana, I lost my beard!”

The moral of the story - which rhymes in Arabic - is that men cannot please all tastes, nor two wives. Iraqis today are using the story in reference to their Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who is torn between appeasing the United States, which brought him to power and kept him there despite all odds, since 2006, and pleasing his patrons and co-religionaries in Tehran.

The Americans tell him to sign a long-term agreement between with the US, maintaining 50 permanent American military bases in Iraq. The Iranians angrily order him not to, claiming this would be a direct security threat to the region as a whole, and Iran in particular. The Americans reportedly are pressing to finalize the deal by July 30, 2008, upset that no progress has been made since talks started in February. Iran has carried out a massive public relations campaign against the deal, calling on all Shi’ites in Iraq to drown it.

Traditional foes like Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, chairman of the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council, and Muqtada al-Sadr, a leading Shi’ite cleric, have gone into high gear in recent weeks, pressuring Maliki not to sign. Hakim, who enjoys excellent relations with Washington, cannot stand up to his patrons Tehran - or defy his Shi’ite constituency - and say yes to such an agreement, which Iran considers a pretext for long-term US occupation of Iraq.

After a visit to Tehran this month, Maliki at the weekend made his position clear - surprising the Americans - saying, “Iraq has another option that it may use. The Iraqi government, if it wants, has the right to demand that the UN terminate the presence of international forces on Iraqi sovereign soil.”

He added, “When we got to demands made by the American side we found that they greatly infringe on the sovereignty of Iraq and this is something we can never accept. We reached a clear disagreement. But I can assure you that all Iraqis would reject an agreement that violates Iraqi sovereignty in any way.”

These bold words were given under direct orders from the Supreme Leader of Iran, Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, during Maliki’s latest visit to Tehran.

This portrait paints Maliki as beholden to the Iranian theocracy.  At The Captain’s Journal, we believe that this portrait is correct, and thus the game is fairly simple as long as you aren’t too naive to see it and the complexity of your analysis doesn’t cloud the issue.

At stake are some very serious consequences.  Robert Kaplan has written an impassioned plea to Obama to learn from Robert Gates and adjust his approach to Iraq.  But it won’t happen.  We have all of the infrastructure necessary to sustain a longer term presence in Iraq, thus at least providing a temporary barrier to Iranian hegemony (if you can ignore the leftist hyperventilating, this article on U.S. megabases in Iraq is informative).  But this infrastructure might go to no avail.

Obama’s ego is writing checks that the U.S. cannot possibly cash.  He has promised to bring troops home within approximately one year.  This is impossible, as the logistics officers know that it will take two years or more to deploy back to the States.  But more to the point, even if logistics could keep up with Obama’s ego, the question is “should it?”  Do we not have a unique, once-in-a-generation opportunity in Iraq to forestall the regional and ultimately the global ambitions of one of the world’s most significant dangers?

The security agreement must ensure robust rules of engagement, freedom of independent movement, and freedom from prosecution in Iraqi courts for U.S. troops.  The agreement must be pushed through the Iraqi system, as the real opponent is not the Iraqi government or people.  It is Iran, and everyone who isn’t naive or confused at the complexity of his own thought knows it.

David Ignatius gives us another glimpse into the Main Man in Iran’s Fight with the United States.

Let’s try for a moment to put ourselves in the mind of Brigadier General Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Quds Force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. For it is the soft-spoken Soleimani, not Iran’s bombastic President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who plays a decisive role in his nation’s confrontation with the United States.

Soleimani represents the sharp point of the Iranian spear. He is responsible for Iran’s covert activities in Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan and other battlegrounds. He oversees the regime’s relations with its militant proxies, Hizbullah and Hamas. His elite, secretive wing of the Revolutionary Guard is identified as a terrorist organization by the Bush administration, but he is also Iran’s leading strategist on foreign policy. He reports personally to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and his budget (mostly in cash) comes directly from the supreme leader’s office.

Soleimani is said to be confident about Iran’s rising power in the region, according to an Arab official who met recently with him. He sees an America that is weakened by the war in Iraq but still potent. He has told visitors that United States’ and Iran’s goals in Iraq are similar, despite the rhetoric of confrontation. But he has expressed no interest in direct, high-level talks. The Quds Force commander prefers to run out the clock on the Bush administration, hoping that the next administration will be more favorable to Iran’s interests.

“The level of confidence of these [Quds Force] guys is that they are it, and everything else is marginal,” says the Arab who meets regularly with Soleimani.

Soleimani has been adept at turning up the heat in Iraq, then lowering the temperature when it suits Iran’s interest. A good example was the Basra campaign in March when Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki attacked the Mehdi Army, the Shiite militia headed by Muqtada al-Sadr. Though the Iranians had been backing Sadr, they made a quick switch to supporting Maliki. It was Soleimani himself who brokered the cease-fire that restored calm in Basra.

The simultaneous support for Maliki and Sadr is characteristic of Soleimani, according to people who know him well. Rather than pick a single ally, as Americans tend to do, he will choose at least two. By riding several horses at once, he maximizes Iran’s opportunities and reduces its risks.

Soleimani’s opportunism was evident during the heavy shelling of the Green Zone in March. The Iranians had supplied their Mehdi Army allies in Sadr City with very powerful 240 mm rockets and mortars, and they had bracketed their targets in the Green Zone so precisely that US casualties were rising sharply.

After a particularly heavy day of shelling, Genral (sic) David Petraeus sent Soleimani a message - “Stop shooting at the Green Zone.” The message was conveyed verbally by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani. The Quds Force commander didn’t react immediately. But the heavy mortar fire on the Green Zone soon tapered off. Iran had flexed its muscles and demonstrated America’s vulnerability, and then opted for a tactical retreat.

The only compromise between full scale conventional war with Iran and abject surrender to Iraninan hegemony is selective targeting and fomenting an insurgency inside of Iran and its security apparatus (Qassem Suleimani himself should be targeted, and he should know that he is is a marked man).  As for the words from General David Petraeus to General Qassem Suleimani, they might have been more effective had they carried threats.

Iran has mastered the art of small scale, covert intelligence warfare.  The U.S. will master the art as well if we are to be successful in Iraq and throughout the larger region.  Time is short.

Prior: Is Iran the Biggest Problem is Iraq?