Iraq War Update: Fight Shifts From AQI to Iran's Agents
By James Gordon Meek
We reported in the New York Daily News last weekend that some policymakers now see the Iraq war as simply one battlefront in a broader conflict -- no, not the “Global War on Terror” waged by ex-President Bush. A new war.
“This is rapidly becoming a regional proxy war with Iran,” argues Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-Queens), chairman of a House Foreign Relations Committee’s panel on the Middle East and South Asia. “The big threat is, was and will remain in the future, Iran.”
“We’re definitely trying to fight Iran’s influence in Iraq,” agreed a U.S. intelligence official.
Today, violence in Iraq is way down compared to a year ago. With the Sunni-supported Al Qaeda in Iraq on the ropes, the U.S. military now routinely issues statements about operations targeting Tehran-backed militias such as the “Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq criminal network,” which they allege gets cash, training and weapons from the Iranian Quds Force, and the “Katai’b Hezbollah,” described by the U.S. as a “surrogate of Iran.”
While the U.S. has patched together a fragile and imperfect truce of sorts between Iraq's warring factions, “if there was a political implosion, or security deteriorated, it would be a serious breakdown,” a second U.S. intelligence official told The Mouth.
“Iraq’s neighbors - particularly Iran - could see an opportunity,” the official added.
But not everyone agrees that Iran has that much influence anymore in the Shi’a Muslim neighborhoods of southern Iraq.
“I get the sense that Iran won’t be a huge internal threat. The south has gone solidly the other way,” retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey told me late last year after an extensive trip through Iraq.
Curious, I asked Multi-National Forces-Iraq in Baghdad a series of questions last November about Iranian subversive activity. Read the answers on The News' Mouth of the Potomac Blog.
