Iran needs to take a pragmatic approach in the wake of ISIS’ growing influence in Iraq. Any military misadventure in Maliki’s support will jeopardise Iran’s efforts to mend ties with Gulf Arab states
In his much debated book, The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future, Vali Nasr has anticipated that the empowerment of long subjugated Shia majority on the political firmament in Iraq will create paranoia among Sunni elites who have ruled Iraq since ages and will upset the sectarian balance in Iraq and the broader West Asia for years to come. The increasing sectarianism will complicate the efforts to contain radicalism and terrorism from the most prominent flashpoints in the world.
Since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Shia-majority country has steadily descended into chaos and anarchy. The historic land of Mesopotamian civilisation is grappling with war, treachery and deception.The recent onslaught of the ruthless terror outfit of al-Da’esh, acronym of al-Dawlat al-Islamiyya al-Iraq wa’ al-Sham, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), has become a biggest threat to the national security and integrity of Iraq. The blitzkrieg offensive of the ISIS on the Iraqi security forces has dumbfounded the transitional Maliki Government. The rapid advance of ISIS into the northern provinces of Nineveh and Salahuddin from the porous Syrian border with the tacit support of Turkey and other Gulf Arab monarchies has turned the issue into a geopolitical contestation among the regional heavyweights. Rather, these developments have been seen through the sectarian prism, ignoring the butchery that the foreign mercenaries have perpetrated. Given these facts, Shias’ fear is not illogical.
However, the attack on revered shrines of Imams in the atabat al-aliyaat, the holy cities of Najaf, Karbala, Kadhimiyya and Samarrah are not a new phenomenon in the recent history of Iraq. The 1802 attack of Ikhwan Wahhabi zealots of present day Saudi Arabia, the 1991 attack by Baathist forces and the 2006 bombing of Samarrah shrine have left indelible mark on Shias’ memory. The ISIS’ threat of razing the revered Shia shrines has emboldened the Shia rhetoric and compelled them to take up arms against the Islamist’s onslaught. Even, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani delivered an emotive speech regarding these overarching concerns.
The recent upsurge have strengthen the argument what Fouad Ajami had said about the homicidal and suicidal nature of Sunnis and Shias respectively.
The Iraqi crisis has compelled its neighbours to play a pragmatic role in this quagmire. Among all neighbours, Iran has vital geopolitical interests in Iraq. A long, porous border and extensive political, economic, religious and cultural ties provide Iran the range of prospects for significant influence on Iraq. However, the Iranian influence must be understood against the background of their centuries old relationship and the contemporary ideological unanimity. All the present Islamist organisations which are at the helm of affairs in Iraq had a long strategic and ideological linkage with Iran, including Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and Hizb al-Da’wa al-Islamiyya (Islamic Da’wa Party) leader. To avoid Saddam’s ruthless repression, the Shia Islamists took shelter in Iran and since then they have enjoyed a close relationship with Iranian leadership.
Apart from its traditional ideological factor in its foreign policy, Iran has also employed its pragmatic foreign policy in its pursuit to acquire a respectable position at the international arena. Iraq is no exception. In course of time, both the determining factors have converged to shape up Iran’s policy towards Iraq.
Such initiatives by Iranians have been accentuated by the growing security challenges emanating from the US and its Gulf Arab allies. In turn, such threats result in Iran’s robust policies towards Iraq to secure its national interests. Furthermore, in the last 35 years it has dawned on Iran that despite taking up Islam as a binding force among Muslim States it has always been on the receiving end when it comes to the thin red line — the sect. The clarion call has fallen on deaf ears of the rich Arab countries. They always played sectarian card to isolate Iran from the Sunni heartland.
Yet, the spectre of violence and its political fallout have forced Iran to back its Shia allies in the region. The symbiotic relationship has reached such a level that Iraq relies on Iran for its survival. The Shias of Iraq didn’t enjoy power in Iraq before 2003. They were systematically marginalised from the mainstream political processes. The Shia religious establishment, the marja’iyya, has played a commendable role in blunting the sectarian backlash during the tumultuous period after the exit of Sunni-dominated Baathist.
As far as the Iraq’s Sunni minority is concerned, they have yet not come to terms with the reality that they are out of power. They are in no position to accept the Shia dominated political situation. The ongoing civil war in Syria has stoked Sunnis’ anger towards Shias. It poses potential threat to Iraq’s social cohesion. Moreover, the oil-rich Gulf Arab States and exponents of hardline Wahhabi ideology are striving hard to exploit the widespread discontent to curtail Iran’s growing influence in the region. In this prevailing scenario, anti-Iran feeling is saving the authoritarian regimes in the region from the Arab-Islamist non-state actors’ anger.
Tehran’s foremost goal in Iraq has been to prevent the emergence of a force that may emerge as a threat to Iran’s security. Iran also fears that civil war in Iraq may spill onto its territory and destabilise Iran itself, or it may drag Iran into a regional conflict over Iraq. Iranians might look for an ally in Iraq like what it has with the Assad regime in Syria, or with Hezbollah in lebanon. Iran wants more allies for ‘axis of resistance’ in the region as it has been constantly under threat from the US since 1979 and more after it embarked on its nuclear programme. There is no denying the fact that Iran’s elite military, the Qods Force of Sepah-i Pasdaran-i Inqilab-i Islami, IRGC headed by the ‘living martyr’ Major General Qasem Soleimani, has been overseeing the whole security arrangements with the Iraqi military strategists to repulse the ISIS’s tide.
Iran’s military support for beleaguered Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki will jeopardise recent efforts to mend ties with Gulf Arab states, who blame his policies for the present crisis. In an apparent reference to its regional adversary, Saudi Arabia has warned against foreign intervention in the conflict. There are ample evidence that the Arab Gulf monarchies have covertly or overtly splurged petro-dollars on foreign mercenaries to create ripples across the region to contain the Iranian influence. Western countries committed the same mistake as they did with the Taliban in Afghanistan by arming fanatic militants with ‘lethal weapons.’
The radical ISIS has expressed its desire to establish an ‘Islamic Caliphate’ from western part of India to Spain, leaving al-Qaeda in awkward position. They have even asked “all Muslims” to pay allegiance “Caliph” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. However, moderate Sunni factions in Iraq have opposed ISIS’ sinister design. Sunni leaders know that forming an independent state is a losing proposition as they are bereft of natural resources in the north western part of Iraq. That is why they opposed the idea of dividing the country into three autonomous regions.
On the contrary, they blamed Iran for this mess, after creating the hoax of a ‘Shia Crescent’ in the region which would begin from Iran to lebanon via Iraq and Saudi Arabia’s eastern oil-rich Shia-dominated al-Hasa province. The fear of Shia dominance has once again seized the collective psyche of Arab rulers. The genesis of this new phenomenon of Shia-Sunni dichotomy lies in the recent history of geopolitics, not in the early divide of Islam.
The ‘fear’ has been further amplified by the Hezbollah’s historic success in 34-day war with Israel in 2006 and the robust assertion of Iran’s foreign policy. This idea had also popped-up after the Islamic Revolution of Iran in 1979.
(The writer is a Research Scholar at the Centre for West Asian Studies, Jamia Millia Islamia)