by Scott Sullivan, THE CONSERVATIVE VOICE
[Warning: Sullivan has a completely different take on Iraq and Iran and he is quite unorthodox in his thinking. Take from it what you want]
Yes, Ahmadinejad today is riding high. He has the US working for him in Iraq by suppressing the Sunnis and Muqtada al-Sadr. He has taken the Kurds away from the US as allies, so that Iraq’s president Jalal Talabani now calls the Iranians bothers and the US merely friends. He has isolated the British from the US to the point where President Bush will not even speak out in defense of the British hostages.
Nonetheless, Ahmadinejad is going down. Ahmadinejad will be made Ayatollah Khamenei’s scapegoat for Iranian losses in Iraq, as follows.
First, Iran will be forced to use its own forces to take southern Iraq and Basra, with its vast oil reserves. Iran was hopng the US and the UK would break the Iraqi resistance. Meanwhile, Iranian hopes of dominating all of the new Iraq as a client state have vanished, due to the civil war in Iraq.
Second, Iran’s intervention in southern Iraq is opposed by all of Iraq’s neighbors, who are aiding the Iraqi resistance. Turkey may even send its own forces into northern Iraq in order to stop Iran’s Kurdish allies. Iranian and Turkish forces could confront each other in northern Iraq. This would be a disaster for Iran, which is in no position to confront Turkey and its allies.
Third, relying on the Iraqi Kurds as Iranian allies in Iraq was a mistake. The Kurds are too greedy for territory, as shown by persistent Kurdish attempts to annex the northern city of Kirkuk and its vast oil reserves. Turkey and the Arabs strongly oppose Kurdish annexation of Kirkuk. The Kurds are provoking Turkey and the Arabs into resistance against themselves and the Iranians.
Fourth, Iran had a good plan to partition Iraq with the Kurds. Unfortunately, if the Kurds fail to take Kirkuk, Iraq’s partition is not going to happen. The Kurds must have Kirkuk and its oil in order to declare independence for Kurdistan.
Fifth, Iran is placing its own territorial integrity at risk by promoting Kurdish separatism. Iranian Kurds will join the Iraqi Kurds in calling for independence. Even Sheik Nasrallah of Lebanon’s Hezbollah, along with virtually all Arab leaders, thinks Iran’s pro-Kurdish partition plan for Iraq is dangerous for the region.
Sixth, Iran was too vindictive against the Iraqi Sunnis. Iraq’s Sunnis have shown they will fight forever if Iran continues to cooperate with the Kurds to partition Iraq,
Seventh, Ahamdinejad is largely to blame for Iran’s “annex Basra, now†policy. He wrecked Iran’s economy and Iran’s oil sector. Iran is now desperate for a bailout, which it believes Basra and its oil will provide.
Eighth, Ahmadinejad is a creation of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), which is running too high a political profile these days, thanks to the political vacuum created by Ahmadinejad. The IRGC, a modern day version of the SS, is making big headlines and big mistakes, such as the recent kidnapping of the UK fifteen. Iran now gives the impression that the IRGC is in charge, not Ahmadinejad. Foreign oil companies and investors do not want to have to deal with the IRGC.
Ninth, Ahmadinejad has erred by calling the Holocaust “a myth.†No one in the world, aside from him, wants to revisit this issue.
Tenth, Ahmadinejad talks too much about overturning the international order. The international order is none of his business. His lose talk brought only a single new ally to Iran – fellow megalomaniac and would-be Mussolini, Venezuela’s president Hugo Chavez.
In short, do not be fooled by Ahmadinejad’s recent gains, as on Iranian nukes. Ahmadinejad is a liability for Ayatollah Khamenei and ex-president Rafsasnjani. Ahamadinejad will be first of this main leadership team to go over the side. Again, Ahmadinejad is going down, and soon.
It doesn’t matter what happens to Ahmedinejad– he’s a mouthpiece, nothing more than a figurehead and doesn’t have real power. Khameini and the mullahs have that.
Still, there’s a grain of truth in the article: “Yes, Ahmadinejad today is riding high. He has the US working for him in Iraq by suppressing the Sunnis and Muqtada al-Sadr. ”
Damn right. Nothing could better emphasize the stupidity of American policy in Iraq, than the way the US is handing the keys to power to the Shiites most allied to Iran– the SCIRI and Badr Brigade organization under Abdel Aziz Hakim, and Dawa. If the USA officials had any brains, they’d be arming the Sunnis and al-Sadr against the SCIRI/Dawa government, while undertaking military operations to gut the Iraqi commandos, the Badr Brigade headquarters and the Iraqi police, which has many Badr and SCIRI members.
Those are the true enemies– they’re the ones most closely allied to Iran. But Bush is either too stupid, or too lazy to do that– or he’s too smitten with the high-sounding idiocy of Condi Rice.
IOW, the USA is spending over $100 billion a year to put Iraq’s oil resources into the hands of Iran. If there’s a greater example of utter and absolute stupidity in a country’s war management, I sure couldn’t think of it.