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Iraq edges closer to Iran, with or without
the U.S.
16.1.2007
By Louise Roug and Borzou Daragahi
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January 16, 2007
BAGHDAD — The Iraqi government is moving to
solidify relations with Iran, even as the United
States turns up the rhetorical heat and bolsters its
military forces to confront Tehran's influence in
Iraq.
Iraq's foreign minister, responding to a U.S. raid
on an Iranian office in Erbil in Kurdistan Region
(northern Iraq) last week, said Monday that the
government intended to transform similar Iranian
agencies into consulates. The minister, Hoshyar
Zebari, also said the government planned to
negotiate more border entry points with Iran.
The U.S. military is still holding five Iranians
detained in Thursday's raid. Army Gen. George W.
Casey Jr., the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq,
said records seized in the raid and statements made
by the detainees showed that at least some of them
worked for Iran's intelligence service.
"I don't think there is any disagreement on the fact
that these folks that we have captured are foreign
intelligence agents in this country, working with
Iraqis to destabilize Iraq and target coalition
forces that are here at Iraq's request," Casey said
Monday.
Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq,
added, "We are going after their networks in Iraq."
Iraqis, who have echoed Tehran's calls for the U.S.
to release the five men, say the three-way standoff
that has ensued reveals more about American meddling
in Iraqi affairs than about Iranian influence.
"We, as Iraqis, have our own interest," Zebari said
in an interview with The Times. "We are bound by
geographic destiny to live with" Iran, adding that
the Iraqi government wanted "to engage them
constructively."
Zebari's comments reinforced the growing differences
between the Iraqi government's approach and that of
the Bush administration, which has rejected calls by
the nonpartisan Iraq Study Group to open talks with
Iran and Syria.
Administration officials accuse Iran of sowing
anarchy and violence in the region.
Zebari's remarks came two days after Iraq and Iran
announced a security agreement. "Terrorism threatens
not only Iraq but all the regional countries,"
Iranian radio reported Sherwan Waili, Iraq's
national security minister, as saying.
The overtures to Tehran also followed Iraqi Prime
Minister Nouri Maliki's appointment last week of a
security commander for Baghdad over the objections
of U.S. officials, who favored another candidate.
American officials oppose the presence in Iraq of
Iranian officials and members of the Revolutionary
Guard, which is controlled by religious hard-liners
in Iran. Washington and Tehran have been at odds for
decades and are in a standoff over Iran's nuclear
ambitions.
But to Iraq, Iran is its biggest trading partner and
a source of tourist revenue, mainly from the
thousands of Shiite Muslim pilgrims who travel to
the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala every year.
In Iraq's semiautonomous Kurdish north, much of the
economy is founded on trade with Iran and the
smuggling of contraband into the Islamic Republic.
Since the 1979 founding of Iran's theocracy,
Kurdistan has been a transit point for banned
alcohol, movies and satellite dishes.
A blow to the economy
The U.S. raid on the Iranian office, which handled
visas and other paperwork for Iraqis traveling to
Iran, struck at the heart of Kurdistan's economy,
which depends on commercial ties with Iran
facilitated through that office.
Doing business with Iran also means doing business
with the Revolutionary Guard, an institution that
controls Iran's borders. Hassan Kazemi-Qomi, Iran's
ambassador to Iraq, is a former member of the guard.
Any neighboring country that wants to do business
with Iran has to deal with members of the force,
which was created by Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini to aid the Islamic revolution.
Iraq's Kurds share a storied history with the
Revolutionary Guard, fighting side by side against
former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in the 1980-88
Iran-Iraq war.
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, once told
The Times that he planned military operations
against Hussein with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's
controversial president.
Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador, acknowledged the
past but said it was time for Iraqis to sever ties
to such groups.
"Now Iraq is in a different place," he said. "There
cannot be and there should not be relations with
security institutions of neighboring states that
work against the interests of this new Iraq."
Iraqis and Kurds who oppose the detention of the
five Iranians say the U.S. raid made the Iraqi
government appear weak or a puppet of the Americans.
"They should help the Iraqi government to
demonstrate its independence [and] sovereignty in
its dealing with other countries," said Zebari, the
foreign minister, referring to U.S. officials.
"Because of the simplest things, any country will
question the basis of your sovereignty, and that
weakens the position of the Iraqi
government."
'Not a new discovery'
Iraqi officials want the U.S. to release the five
Iranians. Zebari described them as "Iranian
officials" working in a "liaison office" where
Iraqis could go for "consular services like travel
permits to Iran."
Kurdish regional authorities and the government in
Baghdad knew about the Iranians in Irbil and were in
the process of transforming the agency into a
consulate, Zebari said.
"This is not a new discovery, this office," he said.
The Iranians had been "working there publicly,
openly. It was not a clandestine network. That's the
thing we need to explain to our friends."
He said the Iraqi government had not been shown any
of what Casey said was evidence that the Iranians
were spies. He said Iraq had not been part of the
interrogation.
While Iraq has been strengthening its ties with
Iran, it has also made overtures to its western
neighbor Syria. Talabani is on a state visit to
Damascus, the first such high-level meeting in
almost three decades.
"For some time, we've been working quietly with them
to normalize relations, to start up security talks
with them," Zebari said.
The Iraq Study Group recommended that the U.S. begin
a dialogue with Iran and Syria.
But administration officials, under the sway of
neoconservative intellectuals who see Iran as a
danger to Israel and the U.S., have resisted such
calls, saying Tehran must give up its nuclear
program and stop supporting militant groups in the
Palestinian territories and Lebanon before there can
be talks.
Last year, Abdelaziz Hakim, a leading Shiite
politician in Iraq who spent years in exile in Iran,
tried to improve U.S.-Iran relations by proposing
that Iraq act as a go-between or a host for talks
between the two nations. Iran rejected the plan when
it became public, Zebari said.
Instead, relations have worsened, creating
diplomatic headaches in Iraq.
"This is not a clean war," Zebari said. "These
complications, embarrassments happen. Through these
last three, four years we've been through this many
times."
latimes com
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