Bahram Rajaee: An Inconvenient Reality
The following is an excerpt from a NIAC memo by Bahram Rajaee. Read the whole thing here.
In recent months Iran has apparently honored its commitment made to the Iraqi government to reduce the flow of weapons — in particular, the deadly Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) known as Explosively Formed Penetrators (EFPs) — into Iraq. This development has been recently acknowledged by the Pentagon itself, which in early November noted that the number of EFP incidents has declined from 99 in July to 53 in October.
Even if one accepts the problematic premise that all EFPs in Iraq today originate in Iran or are employed by Shi’a militias alone, this trend is clearly a positive one. It underscores Iran’s capacity to constructively support stability in Iraq. Perhaps more importantly, it highlights the discrepancy between the declining number of EFPs and the continued flow of foreign Sunni Arab fighters into Iraq that appears largely unimpeded by the “friendly” Sunni states.
Moreover, the number of Iranian fighters in Iraq is miniscule compared with detainees from Arab states or Sunni Iraqis. A reported 11 Iranians have been detained by U.S. forces to date, and it is unclear if this number includes those whose diplomatic status was been raised by both the Iranian and Iraqi governments at the time of their detention.
This compares with the more than 25,000 individuals detained by the U.S. in Iraq, four-fifths of whom are Sunni Arab — either Iraqi or foreign nationals. These numbers are even more eye-opening when one considers that only roughly 20% of all Iraqis are Sunnis.
Despite widespread Iraq coverage, the extent to which the ongoing insurgency in Iraq is an overwhelmingly Sunni one remains an under examined story. It is also largely publicly unacknowledged in Washington, DC, particularly among hawks and in the Bush Administration’s policy making circles.
U.S. continued reliance upon Sunni Arab regimes in the region for a host of foreign policy goals is a well-established fact, as is the adversarial relationship the United States has had with Iran since 1979. Nevertheless, our conflicts with Iran should not overwhelm our ability to be clear-eyed about the realities on the ground in Iraq. Nor should they be permitted to be made to appear as somehow larger or more intractable than they actually are.
Willfully ignoring the realities of the characteristics of the Iraqi insurgency only erodes our ability to manage this difficult set of challenges. Despite the overall reductions in violence since the increases in U.S. forces in Iraq this spring, the future of Iraq will be determined by the extent to which Iraqis are able to forge an enduring compromise regarding governance arrangements.
Given its ties and influence with Iraqi Shi’a groups, Iran’s support for this process will facilitate its success. Its opposition will make it that much more difficult, a prospect for which the Bush Administration has yet to articulate any convincing response — in effect leaving us dependent on at least tacit Iranian support.
Giving Sunni Arab states a free pass on their unwillingness to reduce the flow of foreign fighters into Iraq, while focusing disproportionately on Iran, belies the unwillingness of the Bush Administration to make the hard choice essential to success in Iraq.
Irancove @ December 1, 2007