Iran's Great Victory

By Larry Johnson

by
Larry C. Johnson

Neocons desperate to sustain the good news delusion from Iraq will find little solace in the election results that are supposed to be announced on Sunday, Februay 13, 2005. After twenty years of trying to contain the Government of Iran, the biggest sponsor of terrorism against the United States, we are on the threshhold of creating the second Shia state in the Middle East and opening the door for Iran to consolidate its position as the preeminent military power in the region. I received the following from a Senior military commander who is currently serving his country and the people of Iraq. The news is not good.

The Provincial Council for Baghdad will soon be represented by 47 Shia Islamists and 4 Shia Secularists. No Sunni, Christian or Kurdish slates had enough votes to meet the majic threshhold for seats under this bizarre system that the UN has allowed the Iraqis to establish. So even those minorities who voted were completely disenfranchised. Diyala Province (Bacuba), where 55% of the population is Sunni, had even more disturbing results, as there it looks like 20 out of 41 seats are going to Shia, who with the Kurds will have an overwhelming majority. The violence that is bound to come over the upcoming Ashura/Arba'in period is going to contribute even more to hardening the sectarian positions, which will make discussion of any of the hard constitutional issues explosive.

The insurgents remain very effective. They recently launched a complex attack/ambush at Salman Pak of 150 IPS who were ambushed over a 4 km stretch of ground in what had to be a planned attack with very good intel. The insurgents attacked a convoy of 25-30 police vehicles (full of Najaf IPS militia) after they entered the town, and then ambushed at 4 other locations those who tried to escape. The Iraqi MOI Commando QRF responded immediately and without any planning to the ambush. They took fire when they arrived, and the police with them panicked when they saw burning vehicles and dead bodies, and started indiscriminate firing, which made it impossible to figure out where the enemy was. The Americans with them called in attack helos and a heavy Bn (-) QRF from 2-8 Cav to get into town, and miraculously avoided fratricide. It appears the friendlies lost 7-10 IPS KIA and 50-72 IPS WIA vs 16-25 EKIA. The enemy had to be at least a company to have destroyed 14 IPS vehicles at multiple locations over that distance in such a short time. The enemy disappeared by foot into the town. Firendlies conducted search ops when they arrived, but only were able to detain 9 possible enemy as it got dark. Now they are trying to organize/plan a big Iraqi opn to return to this area, which has no CF or Iraqi troop presence.

I don't understand what we are doing, and cannot fathom the insanity of the "neo-Jacobin" position. I really can't imagine doing this indefinitely in Iran and Syria. There are a lot of guys in this part of the world who don't threaten well...

If, in the coming days, the United States led coalition presses the battle against the Sunni insurgents we will find ourselves acting on behalf of the interests of the Government of Iran at the same time we are threatening Iran for pursuing nuclear technologies that could be developed into weapons. This may be a new definition of Schizophrenia.

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