Who woulda thunk it? Riding to the rescue of the U.S. in Iraq right now: the Iranians! Given the last decade-plus, this has to qualify as part of our increasingly mondo bizarro world. Reports have it that up to 2,000 Iranian Republican Guards may already be in Iraq. So now, with the Saudis and Kuwaitis funding the jihadis in Syria and increasingly Iraq, and the U.S. and Iran in a sudden, de facto alliance, the world of the Middle East is upside down... no? Check out Juan Cole on the Iranians and Iraq. Right now, in fact, his Informed Comment blog is simply a must read daily. Tom Iran has decided to intervene directly in Iraq and has already sent fighters to the front, according to the Wall Street Journal, based on Iranian sources. It is alleged that Iranian special forces have helped the Iraqi army push back in Tikrit, the birth place of Saddam Hussein that was overrun earlier this week by ISIS, which captured the city’s police force. These reports come on the heels of President Hassan Rouhani’s pledge on Thursday that Iran would not stand by and allow terrorists to take over Iraq. The hyper-Sunni Islamic State of Iraq and Syria fighters are closing in on a major Shiite shrine in Samarra and have pledge to take Baghdad, the capital, itself. Iran has allegedly supplied small numbers of advisers and even hired Afghan fighters to the Syrian regime, and encouraged Lebanon’s Hizbullah to intervene in Syria to prevent the fall of Homs to Sunni extremists. These Iranian interventions in Syria did shore up the al-Assad regime and reverse rebel momentum. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps may believe it can use the same tactics to roll back ISIS in Iraq. Iran is largely Shiite and has a Shiite religious ideology as the basis of the state. Iraq is 60% Shiite and the ruling government since 2005 has come from that community. Sunni Arabs in Iraq are probably only 17% or so, but had been the elite for most of Iraq’s medieval and modern history, until George W. Bush overthrew the predominantly Sunni Saddam Hussein regime and allowed the Shiites to come to power. juancole/2014/06/second-american-switch.html
Posted on: Sat, 14 Jun 2014 17:01:19 +0000
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