One sleepless night last week I crawled out of bed and flipped through television channels, landed on PBS' Charlie Rose program and watched portions of a fascinating and insightful discussion on Iraq with New York Times reporters Jonathan Burns and Dexter Filkins -- in which the newsmen got one fundamental issue wrong.
Midway through the show, Rose asked them -- paraphrasing -- just what does the war in Iraq boil down to right now?
Burns and Filkins, both deservedly honored for their reporting, answered that it was the sectarian conflict between Sunni and Shia.
In the midst of so many other interesting comments, that one judgment really stood out to me. Their answer was correct in 2005, 2006 and the first few months of 2007. It is no longer applicable, in my thinking.
Today, it's all about Iran.
With the cooperation of the Sunni Awakening groups that turned on al Qaeda in Iraq and the self-imposed cease fire by the Shiite Mahdi army, tremendous strides were made in improving security through much of Iraq last year and early this year, pocked only by some intra-Shia strife and the occasional al Qaeda bombing.
Here we are in the middle of April and the security situation is deteriorating in the Shiite areas. The Mahdi Army, whose leader, Muqtada al-Sadr, has apparently spent most of the past few years in Iran, is active again. All sorts of Shiite militant groups, from the Mahdis to smugglers and other criminals, took control of Basra -- Iraq's second-largest city -- while British troops twiddled their collective thumbs. And took control to the extent that a major push to dislodge them by government forces mostly failed.
Fighting between government troops and Shiite militants has also taken place in the teeming slums of Sadr City in Baghdad.
Things had been looking better for our venture in Iraq. Now this. Why?
For an answer, look to those who cannot afford for America to succeed in Iraq. Iran. Sure, U.S. military leaders and the Bush administration have blamed the Iranian regime for all sorts of troubles in recent years, including the incitement of violence and delivery of armaments to both Iraq and Afghanistan. It can be hard to believe anything said in Washington, D.C. these days, but there's enough circumstantial evidence to support the theory of Iran as the biggest troublemaker.
We know that Iran has been arming insurgent groups. We know they've trained many of the militant Shiite leaders. We know that al-Sadr has spent considerable time in Iran -- and is probably there now after one of his top aides was assassinated in Najaf.
The biggest thing, however, is that the hard-liners cannot, under any circumstances, let America win in Iraq. It's tempting to think in the 20th century mindset that having a peaceful, stable and Shiite-led neighbor on its western border would be to Iran's advantage. In fact it would, in time, but only if it was put there by Iran. If it's a creation of the United States, the Great Satan, right on their doorstep, the Iranian leadership will lose most of the street cred its built up in the radical Islamist world. Coupled with the prospect of NATO success in Afghanistan, Iran will be hemmed in by the infidels, who could then bring some real pressure to bear against their nuclear program.
A secure western border can wait, as far as Iran is concerned. It's no surprise that the latest fighting broke out just as things were looking up for us.
I hope for two things. First, that the rest of our leaders -- and this being an election year, our prospective leaders -- aren't as behind the curve as Burns and Filkins are. I think some of us are indeed awake, especially in our military leadership, who mention Iranian meddling frequently.
Second, that the strategy of the United States for the rest of 2008 and likely into 2009 will be limiting or eliminating the influence of Iran while at the same time consolidating last year's gains in other areas. I do not advocate going to war with them, though I'd love an opportunity for us to bloody their nose in a limited engagement, just to remind them whose boss. We absolutely have to secure the border between the two nations as best we can, with the involvement of our troops.
We also have to continue to encourage Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to keep pressuring Shiite extremists who are backed by Iran. His recent, ill-fated assault on militants in Basra shows that he might also be coming to understand the darker side of a country with which he'd previously been friendly.
