Iraq's Shiites Unlikely to be Iran's Proxies

San Francisco Chronicle:

To hard-line cleric Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, every vote cast in Iraq's election was a "big 'no' to the U.S." The United States "has no option but to leave that country in shame" now that a coalition led by Shiite clerics and former exile groups with close ties to Iran has emerged victorious, said Maj. Gen. Rahim-Safavi, head of Iran's Revolutionary Guards.

While the Bush administration sees Iraq's election as a vindication for the March 2003 invasion, Iranian conservatives see it as the first step toward getting U.S. troops out of the Persian Gulf region -- and greater influence over its neighbor. ...

At first glance, the ties between Iran and the new government in Iraq are close. Iran sheltered Shiite and Kurdish exile groups who opposed Saddam Hussein. The Iranian government's clerical leaders maintain contact with colleagues in the Iraqi shrine cities of Najaf and Karbala, considered Shiite Islam's most holy sites.

Nearly 70 percent of the 60,000 expatriate Iraqis who cast ballots in Iran voted for the United Iraqi Alliance, the winning Shiite coalition. Political ads for the alliance ran on state-controlled Iranian television.

But the ties may be less binding than they appear.

"The Iraqis have their own identity, and they're not going to follow the Iranian style," said Adnan Ali al-Kadhimi, an official of Iraq's Dawa party, one of the two main groups making up the victorious Shiite coalition.

Regional experts say Iranians may be sorely disappointed if they expect the Shiite parties taking control of the government next door to act as Iranian proxies.

"Shia Iraqis are themselves deeply ambivalent about Iran and Iranian influence in Iraq and can't be relied on to act in Iran's interests," said Simon Kitchen, Middle East analyst for Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy based in New York.

Or, as Abbas Maleki, a former Iranian diplomat put it: "They're Arabs. We're not." ...