The Iraqi opposition has a small militia ready and waiting in Iran. But, asLynne O'Donnell reports from Tehran, they'll probably have to keep on waiting.
Parallel rows of men and boys aged from seven to 70 marched in lockstep to the hypnotic beat of a big bass drum along Paradise Street in downtown Tehran yesterday, flaying themselves with thick chain whips called shallagh.
For two days the Iranian capital has resounded to the slow, steady rhythm backed by a wailing chant that leads Shia Muslims in their mourning for the death 1,323 years ago of Hussein, grandson of the prophet Mohammed.
Red, green and yellow bunting bearing Koranic quotations snapped in the sharp breezes of early spring, and streetside stalls served free tea and food to the faithful.
As at the head of parades like that on Paradise Steet, which clog streets, alleys and bazaars all over Iran, boys carried huge flags and swords, declaring their commitment to continue the struggle against the infidel.
It is scenes such as these, in which throngs of men whip themselves into an often bloody frenzy of devotional fervour, that are sounding alarm bells in Washington, where the Bush administration fears the establishment of a parallel Islamic Republic over the country's eastern border.
In the mountainous valleys between Iran and Iraq, an Islamic militia force of Iraqi Shias is hunkering down in a rapidly expanding encampment, preparing to fight Saddam Hussein once a war begins.
Financed and equipped by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, the Badir Brigade is the armed wing of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and claims to be drawing thousands of fighters to its new military headquarters.
Commanders say they are ready to fight against Baathist forces - and, if necessary, against Turkish troops if they cross into northern Iraq - to rid their country of the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein.
But the militia, said to number anything from 5,000 to 30,000 men and including defectors from Saddam's army, could find itself confined to barracks, squeezed between the fractious political ambitions of its main backer, Iran, and its chief detractor, the United States.
Western diplomats and officials of the Iraqi opposition said that concerns existed in both Tehran and Washington about the role a fundamentalist fighting force would play in a war to remove Saddam, and the influence its masters could demand in its aftermath.
Washington opposes any involvement by Iran - a member of President Bush's "axis of evil" - in the event of a regime-changing war in Iraq.
"We think any Iranian presence or Iranian-supported presence in that region is destabilising and not positive," the State Department's spokesman, Mr Richard Boucher, said last month as the Badir Brigade began gathering on the Iraqi side of the Sirwan river valley.
One European diplomat in Tehran said pre-war co-operation between Tehran and Washington would likely mean that "the Badir Brigade won't even get their boots dirty because they won't get to leave their camp".
The SCIRI was founded in 1982 by Mohammed Bakr al-Hakim, a follower of the late Iranian revolutionary leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, to give voice to Iraq's Shia minority, who are concentrated in the south and have been the target of Saddam's genocidal campaigns.
Al-Hakim has one of six seats on the leadership council formed by the Iraqi opposition late last month, adding a fundamentalist presence to an already complicated cocktail of ethnic and territorial interests vying for influence in Iraq's future.
The SCIRI took part in a failed uprising against Saddam after the first Gulf War.
Washington's lack of support then added grist to al-Hakim's outspoken denunciation of the United States last month and his opposition to a prolonged American military presence in Iraq after a war.
The Badir Brigade's arsenal reportedly includes tanks, anti-aircraft guns, heavy artillery, rockets and mortars. About 250 guerrillas are said to have been based in the eastern zone of northern Iraq, controlled by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, since 2000.
As the various Kurdish groups in the north build up their own fighting forces, the presence of the brigade gives Iran military muscle to back up post-war power claims by the Iraqi Shia.
It also provides an Iranian counterbalance to the potential presence of Turkish troops, much opposed by the Iraqi opposition groups.
Nevertheless, some analysts see concerns rising in Tehran about the potential for the SCIRI to grab too large a share of the post-Saddam pie and eclipsing Iran as the fundamentalist power-broker of the region.
As quiet and pragmatic co-operation between Tehran and Washington increases ahead of anti-Saddam hostilities - with agreements, for instance, to allow American fly-overs, and on joint search-and-rescue missions - the Iranians were likely to back away from the SCIRI, Western diplomats said.
"The Iranians don't want to see them establishing an Islamic state that could potentially undermine the dominant regional role that the \ theocracy regards as its due as guardian of fundamentalist values," said one ambassador, speaking off the record.
While PUK officials have voiced support for the Badir Brigade , and talked up its numbers, a senior official of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, which controls the western sector of northern Iraq, said yesterday they would become "irrelevant".
"Maybe in small groups they will go towards Baghdad or the south, but as a big force moving through and occupying territory or villages, they cannot do that," he said.