Iran works assiduously to secure interests in Iraq

IRAN/IRAQ: Tehran's interest in, and influence of, the new Iraq is hugely important, writes Michael Jansen.

A leading Arab commentator, Raghida Dergham, wrote in the pan-Arab daily al-Hayat that Iran had received Iraq as a gift and had seized the initiative to secure its interests. She was expressing a view held widely in the Arab world.

In the short-term, Tehran's interests coincide with those of the US. Iran would like to see the Sunni insurgency crushed, the draft constitution adopted and a modicum of order imposed so the government can exercise its authority throughout the country and begin reconstruction.

Iran expects the United Iraqi Alliance, the coalition of largely Shia religious parties dominated by Islamic Dawa and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), to retain a majority of seats in a full- term parliament if elections are held in December.

Dawa and its offshoot, the far more assertive SCIRI, are closely allied to Tehran. Their leaders and thousands of rank-and-file supporters took refuge in Iran between 1980 and the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Dawa, an old Iraqi Shia religious party, founded in 1957, is more independent than the SCIRI, which was set up in Tehran in 1982. Its militia, the Badr Corps, was established with Iranian funds and arms.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guard trained the Badr Corps, which fought on Iran's side during the eight-year Iran-Iraq war, and remains in close contact with the Badr Corps and may pack it with Iranian agents.

Senior Dawa and SCIRI officials have top jobs in the government. The prime minister, Ibrahim Jaafari, is the spokesman of Dawa and interior minister Bayan Jabr is a former commander of the Badr Corps. SCIRI members are governors of Baghdad, Najaf and Kerbala and have taken up key posts in the southern provinces.

Its militiamen have been inducted into the armed forces and police. SCIRI-affiliated soldiers and police have been accused of murdering political rivals and former Baathists. SCIRI clerics and muscle men impose Iran-style conservative dress and social codes on Basra and southern cities.

The SCIRI and the Kurds managed to insert a provision in the draft constitution permitting two or more provinces to form regions that would keep control of local resources, including oil.

The SCIRI seeks to form a region of nine Shia-majority provinces where 70 per cent of Iraq's developed and proven oil reserves are located. In addition to oil, this region contains a disproportionate number of Iraq's power plants, its only port at Umm Qasr and potential second port at Basra, lucrative pilgrimage cities and tourism sites and rich agricultural land and water resources.

In addition to enjoying a close relationship with Iraq's governing Shia groups, Iran has cultivated ties with religious figures and tribal factions. Tehran funds mosque maintenance and construction, builds religious schools, clinics, social and sports clubs.

Iran donates masses of books, particularly theological titles, and posters bearing the images of revered Shia theologians stare down from every wall in Shia areas. Portraits of Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, grace the walls of a number of Baghdad's ministries.

Iran's rich charitable foundations, which engage in the export of Iran's Islamic ideology, are involved in welfare projects in Iraq and promote the idea it should become an Islamic state.

Iran is accused by Sunnis and Kurds of disguising intelligence agents as Shia pilgrims and of brainwashing Iraqi Shias who visit Iranian holy sites. Popular interaction across the border is creating a common sense of identity between Iranian and Iraqi Shias.

In the medium to long term, Iran would like to see Iraq emerge as a single state with a strong enough central government to hold the country together but too weak to pose a threat to it.

Tehran expects that the administration in an autonomous super-Shia region would adopt Islamic law and that Basra and Tehran would enjoy fraternal relations, with Tehran acting as big brother.