Weekly Commentary

Tehran Plots to Rig Iraq’s Election

Given the strategic implications of the upcoming parliamentary elections in Iraq for the ruling regime in Iran, Tehran’s public and covert campaign in Iraq has been focused to ensure victory for its proxy Shia parties. In addition to its expanding meddling in Iraq, the clerical regime has allocated major resources in terms of personnel and budget to derail and rig this election. And electoral machination is one thing mullahs do well. They have mastered the art in the past 27 years.

Tehran’s campaign to hijack the Iraqi election, similar to its covert nuclear weapons program, is spearheaded by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC) and the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS). The IRGC-engineered presidency of the Supreme Leader's hand-picked candidate, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the former assassin and IRGC commander, was just the latest example.

Recent news coming out of Iran paints a very alarming picture of the depth and extent of Tehran’s multi-layered, multi-pronged efforts to undermine the December 15 elections. A editorial in the authoritative state-run daily Sharq on Monday openly acknowledged that, aside from the United States, Iran has been the key player in Iraq since the war ended. Iran also views Iraq’s last January elections as a climactic contest where the actual competitors were Tehran and Washington, a contest in which, according to the editorial, Washington lost and Tehran won.

The editorial goes on to say that it seems once again the “winning card” of Iraqi developments is in the Tehran’s hand and that “it should be used to score points in areas where the United States is influential.” “In ten days once again Tehran and Washington will compete when the elections are held… If a coalition of pro-western parties headed by Iyad Alawi in alliance with Kurdish groups forms the next government, then the United States has won. For Iran, only if the current Iraqi government headed by Ibrahim Jaffari in a coalition with Kurdish groups comes out ahead in the elections, the victory has been achieved,” the daily added.

Plain and simple, Tehran has a very well-defined slate of candidates and is doing all it can to ensure their victory. Iran Focus quoted a Jordanian news website Al-Malaf, as reporting last week that one of the “rigging methods by the Iranian regime is to create an atmosphere of fear and intimidation by assassinating election observers.” The report said that independent Iraqi observers feared assassinations or abductions if they did not cooperate with groups affiliated to Tehran.

“Independent Iraqi observers are not willing to go from one province to the other. The reluctance by these observers to go to southern Iraq gives the Iranian regime's elements a free hand to assign their own people as observers and prepare the grounds for rigging”.

Also last week, Iran Focus reported that an Iraqi cleric from Najaf had told the London-based Arab daily a-Sharq al-Awsat that the “United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) – which includes the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and the Islamic Dawa Party – had adopted the tactic used to gain votes in Iran during the June election of hard-line Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president. “The tactic involves the UIA having the clergy announce that they have seen Imam Mahdi in their dreams telling Iraqis to vote for a certain candidate.”

Both SCIRI and Dawa have umbilical ties with Iran’s IRGC and MOIS dating back to the early 1980s. A recent report by the US Congressional Research Services acknowledged as much. “Since the fall of Saddam Hussein, Iran has showcased its growing political and economic influence over and mentorship of the Iraqi government”, the report said. It added: “the thrust of Iran’s strategy in Iraq has been to engineer and perpetuate domination of Iraq’s government by pro-Iranian Shiite Islamist movements that would, in Iran’s view, likely align Iraq’s foreign policy with that of Iran”.

Whether shrewd diplomatic brinkmanship or otherwise, offering to negotiate with the clerical regime within the limited framework of Iraq’s pre- election security issues only emboldens Tehran. The ruling theocracy which views the November 24 decision by the IAEA’s board of governors not to refer Iran’s nuclear case to UN Security Council as a major victory, on Sunday rejected talks with U.S. officials over Iraq.

And that’s where the core problem with these tyrants lies. True to form, the mullahs who have certainly earned their infamy as the “most active state sponsor of terrorism,” a major nuclear proliferator and among the world's worst violator of human rights, can never be a party to any meaningful talks to promote regional peace and stability.

Iran’s rising influence in Iraq, similar to its advance on the nuclear front, is mainly due to the silence and deliberate inaction, or more precisely put, Western appeasement.  (USADI)
 

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United Press International

December 5, 2005

Iran's President purges bureaucracy

TEHERAN, Iran, Dec. 5 (UPI) -- Strengthening his hold on power, Iran's new president has appointed hundreds of officers from the country's Revolutionary Guards to senior government positions.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, or Sepah as it is called in Farsi, has been the main military force underpinning support for Iran's clerical rulers.

The appointments come as the new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, purged hundreds of officials appointed by former presidents Mohammad Khatami and Ali-Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

A former official with close ties to Rafsanjani speaking on condition of anonymity told the Web site Iran Focus, "He (Ahmadinejad) is virtually handing over the bureaucracy to Sepah and the consequences are going to be huge. Anyone seen as a protégé of Hashemi (Rafsanjani) is being booted out without any hesitation."

The revolutionary guards was formed in May 1979 as a paramilitary force loyal to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, but was upgraded to a formal military unit which fought alongside the regular army in the 1980- 1988 Iran-Iraq war.

At least 11 ministers in Ahmadinejad's cabinet are former guards senior officers, while an estimated 75 percent of the ministers and deputy ministers in the new government also come from the IRGC.
 

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Iran Focus

December 6, 2005

U.S. will suffer bigger defeat in Iraq than in Vietnam: Iran

Tehran, Iran, Dec. 06 – The Supreme Commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) declared on Tuesday that the United States would suffer a greater defeat in Iraq than it did in its war in Vietnam.

Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi told a gathering of senior military commanders in the north-eastern city of Mashad that a future Iraq would be in the hands of Muslims.

Claiming that the U.S. was attempting to establish a world order in which only it would be a superpower, Safavi said, “America’s uni-polarised policy in the world has been met with failure”.

Referring to the upcoming December 15 parliamentary elections in Iraq, he said, “More than 50 percent of Iraq’s parliament will be comprised of committed and Islamic forces. The future of Iraq will be in the hands of Muslims”.

Washington, the IRGC chief said, was faced with two options in Iraq. “It must either rapidly withdraw from Iraq or stay to the point that Iraq becomes another Vietnam for America. Both options will lead to defeat”.

“Iraq has become a great quagmire for America. This is because of [U.S. President George W.] Bush’s warmongering policies”.

Safavi said that Washington was attempting to depict the Islamic Republic as impotent. “The mix of Iran and Islam is a great threat for America”.

“The U.S. knows that if it creates problems for us, its 150,000 troops that are based in Iraq will be faced with problems too”.
 

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The US Alliance for Democratic Iran (USADI), is a US-based, non-profit, independent organization, which promotes informed policy debate, exchange of ideas, analysis, research and education to advance a US  policy on Iran which will benefit America’s interests, both at home and in the Middle East, through supporting Iranian people’s  aspirations for a democratic, secular, and peaceful government, free of tyranny, fundamentalism, weapons of mass destruction, and terrorism.

USADI supports the Iranian peoples' aspirations for democracy, peace,  human rights, women’s equality, freedom of expression, separation of  church and state, self-determination, control of land and resources,  cultural integrity, and the right to development and prosperity.

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