Weekly Commentary

Keep Tehran’s Hands off Iraq Elections

In what could be seen as an insight into the expected rise in human rights abuses in Iraq if a Tehran-influenced government were to take over after the December 15 elections in Iraq, the U.S. military discovered a second secret detention center run by the operatives of Iran-linked Badr brigade which also acts as the Interior Ministry's special commando force.

As the clerical regime is working feverishly to secure a “win” at any price for its allies and affiliates a couple of days from now, it is still not too late to intensify efforts to thwart Tehran’s sinister designs to rob the Iraqi people from a free and fair election.

From Tehran’s point of view, victory of the pro-Iran Shi'ite block is a must. This block is mainly comprised of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), headed by the cleric Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, and the Dawa party. It has been accused of violent pre-election attacks against the supporters of the rival secular Shiite block.

In the absence of such a “win,” Iranian officials warn, the inroads Tehran has already made in Iraq since 2003, would be almost undone. That would mean a strategic blow to Iran's ambitious plans for regional dominance by having a “friendly” government in Iraq.

Unlike the January elections, this pro-Tehran Shiite alliance has so far failed to gain the official endorsement of the Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani and three other grand ayatollahs. Deprived of such a crucial backing in midst of growing disenchantment of many Shiites, the alliance was prompted to distribute false literature, claiming that the Ayatollah Sistani had called on Iraqis to only vote for religious candidates. A few days ago, the Grand Ayatollah's office categorically denied ever issuing such an edict.

Under such circumstances, the clerical regime has intensified its efforts to tamper with the vote by putting into effect an elaborate scheme in the past several months.

Tehran is perhaps justified to boast of being in "control of developments in Iraq" given the relatively mild reaction to its three-year meddling in Iraq. Behind the scenes, however, the clerical regime is not leaving anything to chance.

An Iraqi news website reported last Wednesday that Iran was implementing a three-phased plan to rig the elections and had mobilized its “agents” in Iraq accordingly. Emboldened by their success in rigging the Presidential election in Iran last June, the mullahs are trying to duplicate the scheme in Iraq.

According to the Iran Focus website which first published the translation of this report, the first stage of the plan calls for voting multiple times with forged ballots. During the second stage, Tehran’s agents will attempt to tamper with the records of all the ballot boxes at the end of the polls, the report said. The third stage of tampering is supposed to occur when the final voting slips are delivered to the provincial capitals for transfer to the United Nations’ tally center in Baghdad.

In addition, recent news indicate that in an operation run by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and with assistance of the Dawa Party, Tehran had dispatched hundreds of its agents under the guise of pilgrims to the southern Iraqi provinces of al-Amara and al-Kut in a bid to coerce the non-suspecting Shiite Iraqis to vote for the pro-Tehran candidates. It was further reported that the convoys carried large amount of cash and campaign posters of Iranian-backed candidates.

Last week, Iran’s former president and still-influential Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani joined the chorus of other top officials to say that Washington had lost in Iraq and Tehran had won. "America never imagined that the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan would be to Iran’s advantage and to its own detriment,” Rafsanjani boasted.

The strategic cost of inaction or downplaying of Iran’s threat to an independent, democratic and unified Iraq, surpasses any perceived short-term benefit stemming from the naïve belief that diplo-talk will deter Iran from further meddling in the Iraqi affairs. This type of naiveté is nothing short of a strategic blunder with long-term and wide-ranging implications for the Middle East and beyond. (USADI)
 

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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.

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