02 February 2007

Iraq fears being caught in middle of U.S.-Iran tensions

By Liz Sly
Chicago Tribune, 01 February 2007

BAGHDAD -- Alarmed by rising tensions between the United States and Iran, Iraqi government officials fear their country is in danger of being dragged into the middle of a new conflict between its two main allies.

In the past week, the Bush administration has ratcheted up pressure on Iran, saying it has evidence that Tehran is arming Iraqi insurgents and pledging to hunt down Iranian agents operating in Iraq. That has fueled concerns in Baghdad that Iraq will become the battleground in a showdown between Iran and the U.S., Iraqi officials say.

Iraq's Shiite-led government has warm relations with neighboring Iran, and it does not want that relationship compromised by an increasingly strident posture by Washington toward Tehran, Iraqi officials say.

"We want to maintain good relations with our neighbors, especially Iran," Iraqi government spokesman Ali al- Dabbagh told a news conference Thursday in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone. "We have long borders with them, we have local interests with [them] and we would like to have this relationship not in the shadow of the others."

Iraq also wants to maintain good relations with the U.S., he added, stressing that Iraq does not condone attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq. "We want good relations with everyone, whether Iran or the U.S.," he said. "The problems between the U.S. and Iran must not get solved in Iraq."

Tensions between the U.S. and Iran have escalated sharply in recent weeks, with the dispatch of additional U.S. warships to the Persian Gulf and the deployment of upgraded Patriot missiles to Gulf Arab countries, fueling speculation across the region that the U.S. is gearing up for a war with Iran.

Bush administration officials insist they do not intend to go to war with Iran. They have defended the targetting of Iranians in Iraq and other moves in the region as necessary to counter Tehran's backing of Iraqi insurgents, which coincides with U.S. efforts to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.

"We've been very clear we don't intend to strike into Iran, in terms of what we're doing in Iraq," Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns told National Public Radio Thursday.

But Iraq's concern is that the U.S. is taking advantage of its presence in Iraqi territory to rein in Iran's rising influence in the region, Iraqi officials say. Earlier this week, the Los Angeles Times reported that the U.S. Air Force is preparing to undertake more aggressive patrols along the Iraq-Iran border to disrupt insurgent supply lines.

"Any escalation between Iran and the U.S. will be negative for us," said Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish legislator. "If you exclude the Sunnis, the majority of Iraqis think of Iran as a friend."

Many members of Iraq's Shiite-led government sought refuge in Iran from persecution during the Saddam Hussein era and Iraqi officials regularly visit Tehran. Iran's ambassador to Iraq told The New York Times earlier this week that Iran is preparing a major new military and economic assistance package for Iraq—paralleling the Bush administration's strategy to stabilize Iraq by building up the Iraqi army and police while re-energizing its reconstruction effort.

In many ways, Iraq is already serving as a proxy front in the rivalry for regional influence between Tehran and Washington. The U.S. military raided a diplomatic compound in Erbil last month, detaining five Iranians they accused of being Iranian agents aiding insurgents in Iraq. The Bush administration says it is examining a "mountain of evidence" that Iran is arming Shiite militias to attack U.S. forces.

"To the extent that anybody, including Iranians, are smuggling weapons, bringing in fighters, killing Americans, trying to destabilize the democracy in Iraq, we will take appropriate measures to defend our troops and also to defend the mission," White House spokesman Tony Snow warned this week.

Bush first announced a more aggressive stance toward Iran and also Syria when he unveiled his new strategy for Iraq last month, accusing the two countries of aiding Iraq's insurgency and implicitly rejecting recommendations by the Iraq Study Group that the U.S. open a dialogue with Iran.

Plans to announce further evidence of Iran's support for Iraqi insurgents this week have been postponed, amid reports of disputes among U.S. officials over the quality of the evidence.

The Iraqi government has also tried to make it clear that it does not support Iranian meddling in Iraq. When Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki visited Tehran last fall, he urged his hosts not to intervene in Iraqi affairs.

In an interview with CNN Wednesday, al-Maliki said he had asked both Tehran and Washington to resolve their differences elsewhere.

"We have told the Iranians and the Americans, 'We know that you have a problem with each other, but we are asking you: Please solve your problems outside Iraq,'" said al-Maliki. "We don't want the American forces to take Iraq as a field to attack Iran or Syria."

Any conflict between Iran and the U.S. would put Iraq's government in a difficult position, forced to choose between its two main benefactors, said Othman.

"There's a contradiction because America sees Iran as an enemy, whereas the Iraqi government sees Iran as a friend," he said. "The most important country with influence in Iraq right now is Iran, and these issues should be well and thoroughly discussed between America and Iraq."

The increasingly tough rhetoric from Washington has strained Iraq's relationship with the U.S. at the very moment when the two countries are supposed to be working together to implement Bush's new strategy to stabilize Iraq.

An additional 21,500 U.S. troops are headed for Baghdad and western Anbar province to bolster a new security plan aimed at quelling the steadily escalating sectarian conflict between the city's Shiites and Sunnis and combating the anti-U.S. insurgency.

Support for al-Maliki's government lies at the core of Bush's new strategy, but Washington does not consult with the Iraqi government on its threats to pursue Iranians in Iraq, complained Akram Hakim, State Minister of National Reconciliation, who belongs to the ruling Shiite coalition, the United Iraqi Alliance.

"President Bush says he supports the Iraqi government and he says he supports Prime Minister al-Maliki, but I think that going over the head of the Iraqi government on issues like this is not compatible with those statements," he said.

"When there's a contradiction between what he's doing and what he's saying, it will weaken the Iraqi government and weaken the position of the U.S. administration as well."

"For some time, we in the Iraqi government have been warning about turning Iraq into a battlefield between the U.S. and Iran," he added. "There are many problems between the U.S. and Iran, the U.S. and Syria and the U.S. and Al Qaeda, and we don't want them to make Iraq the battlefield for these problems."

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Citation: Liz Sly. "Iraq fears being caught in middle of U.S.-Iran tensions," Chicago Tribune, 01 February 2007.
Original URL: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-070201iran-sly,1,7073466.story?coll=chi-news-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true
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