A Quiet War

Amir Taheri, The NY Post:

JUST over a month ago, Iraq's interim govern ment signed an agreement with the Islamic Republic in Tehran under which up to 5,000 Iranians would be allowed to visit the Shi'ite cities of Karbala and Najaf in southern Iraq. The agreement also provided for a speedier repatriation of Iraqi refugees from Iran.

The agreement attracted little attention, largely because Iranian pilgrims had been flooding the Iraqi "holy cities" since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. Estimates show that more than 10 million pilgrims, mostly Iranians, have visited Karbala and Najaf in the past three years.

But the new agreement contains two disturbing provisions. The first gives Tehran sole authority to decide who should be allowed to visit the Iraqi "holy cities" from Iran. In other words, it would be Iran, not the Iraqi government, that provides the laisser-passer needed for the pilgrimage.

Before the new agreement was signed, Iranian pilgrims had to travel with private tour companies that obtained Iraqi visas at the point of entry into Iraq. This gave the Iraqis an opportunity to refuse entry to any group they deemed undesirable.

The second provision commits Baghdad to recognising as an Iraqi citizen anyone producing a paper to that effect issued by Iranian authorities. READ MORE

During the three decades of Ba'athist rule in Baghdad, an estimated 2.5 million Iraqis either fled to Iran or were expelled by Saddam Hussein as "fake Iraqis of Iranian origin." The expellees became known as the mua'wedeen ("the returned ones"). Many became Iranian citizens while retaining their Iraqi papers.

Days after signing the accord with Iraq, Iranian "Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenei transferred the entire Iraqi dossier to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The IRGC's commander, Gen. Rahim Safavi, later told a news conference in Tehran that his force had been asked to "prepare for all eventualities" with regard to Iraq.

In the past few weeks, the Iranian border police, part of the regular army, have been put under command of the IRGC, which now controls all points of entry into Iraq. At the same time, the IRGC has moved vast quantities of heavy weaponry to "sensitive points" (including the Zaynalkush salient, the Hamroun mountain range and the Dasht-e-Mishan plain) along the 900-mile-long border. Official Iranian reports indicate that the IRCG now has more than 250,000 men at or close to the Iraqi border, the highest concentration of troops there since the Iraq-Iraq war ended in 1988.

All this activity is accompanied by the beginnings of what looks like a massive program of building roads, airstrips and storage facilities close to the border. The IRCG has also set up a number of listening posts along the border, plus a major "electronic surveillance center" on Mainau Island in the middle of the Shatt all-Arab border estuary.

Tehran presents the transfer of the Iraqi dossier to the IRGC as a precautionary measure against alleged attempts by the U.S.-led Coalition to send "saboteurs and infiltrators" into southern Iran. It has accused Britain of having fomented riots that left six dead in the oil capital of Ahvaz last month, and blamed the United States for riots in Iranian Kurdistan, where at least 13 people died in clashes with the security forces in July. (The British and Americans have denied these charges.)

Last year, Iran closed the last refugee camp for the mua'wedeen and announced that almost all had decided to return to Iraq. As the process of repatriation started, however, many Iraqis feared that Iran would use the opportunity to infiltrate thousands of its agents into Iraq disguised as mua'wedeen.

The fear may be exaggerated: Fewer than 3 percent of Iranians have Arabic as their mother tongue. These are members of ethnic Arab tribes who have kith and kin on the Iraqi side of the border. It would not be easy for these Iranian-Arabs to enter Iraq without being exposed as Iranian nationals.

Nevertheless, the IRGC, which surely recruited agents among Iraqi refugees and expellees over the years, is now in a position infiltrate them into Iraq. Such infiltrations are further facilitated by the fact that the new Iraqi police, especially in southern provinces, is made up mainly of members of the Shi'ite militias trained and armed in exile by Iran.

Many Iraqis hold these "Iranian agents" responsible for a series of mysterious murders that have shocked the south, especially Basra, since last March. Nongovernemental groups in Basra, Kut and al-Imarah say that more than 400 people have been assassinated by "unknown assailants" in the past four months.

Some of the victims were members of the Ba'ath, the former ruling party, and may have died in revenge-killings. Others, however, were doctors, lawyers, academics and businessmen who were known for their opposition to Iranian-style theocracy in Iraq.

One thing is certain: Iran is engaged in a low-intensity war against the United States and its allies, including most Iraqi political parties. The Iranian calculation is that the U.S.-led coalition is tired of Iraq and will disengage within a maximum of 31/2 years, that is by the end of the Bush presidency at the latest.

And then, as Khamenei has said, it will be the Islamic Republic — not the United States — that will decide the future not only of Iraq but of the entire Middle East.

Iranian author Amir Taheri is a member of Benador Associates.