On April 4 a pro-Iranian, radical Iraqi cleric called on his followers to "terrorize your enemy"meaning the U.S.and lobbied for all Iraqis to cooperate to bring about a constitutional government. This led tens of thousands of the cleric's armed and unarmed followers to attack U.S. and Coalition forces in four cities. This is a preview of the violence and turmoil that Iranian covert action could inflict in the coming months, a threat that has not yet been fully understood by the Bush Administration and which could be called today's 9-11.
Following the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, the Iranian clerical dictatorship has mounted a covert effort to establish an allied Shi'a Islamist extremist regime in Iraq (60 percent of Iraq is Shi'a). Iran has been preparing to do this for many years and has recruited political, military, and covert agent assets among the hundreds of thousands of Shi'a Iraqis who fled Iraq and have lived in Iran for years.
The dictatorship in Iran is acting to bring about a "second Iran" in Iraq in five ways:
(1) Iran is using those Iraqi Shi'ite clerics who agree that the clergy should rule to build a power base from the mosques and their associated social services.
(2) Iran established the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq as a political movement that could win elections or take power, town by town, with the help of covert Iranian funds and propaganda. This organization also has an Iranian-trained-and-armed paramilitary group of about 30,000. Both the political and the armed wings of this organization began moving from Iran into Iraq in March 2003.
(3) Iran is working covertly with Iraqi extremist Muqtada al-Sadr to use political and coercive means, including murder, to intimidate and take over Shi'ite leadership in Iraq. The murders of several prominent Shi'ite clerical leaders who favored democracy and cooperation with the Coalition repeats Iran's covert actions in post-Taliban Afghanistan, where a number of moderate Muslim clerics also were killed. It was Muqtada al Sadr who issued the call to violence on April 4. The next day the Coalition announced that an Iraqi judge had issued an arrest warrant for him for the murder of the respected moderate cleric, Ayatollah Al Kohei, in April 2003.
(4) Hezbollah, the Iran-supported and often directed terrorist organization, has moved hundreds of its cadres into Iraq. They, along with Hamas, have opened offices in Iraq and are now recruiting Iraqis to be foot soldiers and suicide killers in massive terrorist attacks on U.S. and Coalition forces. Iran most likely will give the order for these attacks after the planned July 1, 2004 turnover of civil authority.
(5) Iran has spent heavily seeking to dominate radio and television broadcasting in Iraq. A survey by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty found that Iran is the source of 33 of 59 AM broadcasts and of 41 of 63 AM/FM/TV broadcasts heard in Iraq. In comparison, the U.S.-supported Iraq Media Network has a total of one television station, two radio stations, and one newspaper.
The Bush Administration must immediately act to counter Iran's covert assets and action plans or risk major setbacks to its goals for Iraq. Indeed, if Iran succeeded in bringing about an anti-U.S., pro-Iranian Shi'a extremist regime in Iraq, the results would be a dramatic increase in the risks to the U.S. and its allies from terrorism and weapons of mass destruction as well as the defeat of the announced Bush "forward strategy for freedom" in the entire Middle East.
A first step is to recognize, analyze, and understand the purposes of Iran and its Iraqi allies and what they have done to date. Next, there is an urgent need to work with moderate Shi'a leaders to build pro-democratic political parties and a broad pro-democratic political coalition that can withstand and overcome the pressures, coercion, and terrorism that the pro-Iranian Shi'a groups will use. This means revising the self-defeating and much too-limited efforts to aid the genuinely democratic Shi'a and other political parties and groups. There also needs to be an enlargement of the pro-democracy Iraqi media presence and, as a corollary, a restriction of the pro-extremist, Iranian-funded media.
An inescapable element of the early stages of post-dictatorship transition is that anti-democratic groups and media will have sources of support far greater than those available to moderates.
There also is a need to move rapidly to arrest all the extremist leaders advocating violence and to disarm their thousands of armed followers. It is quite possible that many of these armed extremists would need to be detained for some time to assure that they will not be able to join terrorist operations against the U.S.
The best defense against the Iranian destabilization of Iraq is to help the people of Iran use political means to liberate themselves from their dictatorship. Polls and partially open elections reveal that more than 80 percent of Iranians completely reject the extremist Shi'ite clerical regime.
Ironically, while the United States may have difficulty defending against Iranian covert political action, it does have the symbolic credibility of its democratic institutions and the knowledge and experience needed to provide discreet assistance to help the people of Iran free themselves.