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Iran, US do a 'war on terror'
somersault
By Sreeram Chaulia
The fierce raid this week by Iraqi military and police units
on Camp Ashraf, a base for the militant Iranian dissident
outfit - Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK) or "People's Holy
Warriors" - was a game changer in Iran's quest to control
the banned organization.
The timing of the intense two-day siege of the camp, which
left six people dead and dozens injured, is clearly linked
to the progressive transfer of security operations from
American to Iraqi troops.
Since January, Iraqi authorities had been promising that
they would not allow the MEK to use their soil for
anti-Iranian activities, an affirmation of the closeness
between the post-Saddam Hussein
dispensation in Baghdad and Tehran. But even though Iraqi
President Jalal Talabani announced in March that the MEK
would be expelled for its anti-Iran behavior, no drastic
measures were taken owing to the continued "protection" that
Camp Ashraf received from occupying American forces. The
attack on MEK this week could only be undertaken after the
US formally handed over security of cities to Iraqi forces.
That the Iraqis were waiting for this opportunity is evident
from comments of General Ray Odierno, the commander of the
US military in the country, that he "did not know" that a
raid was on the cards. Why was the US a stumbling block for
Iraq to take strong measures against an Iranian militant
group that had been declared a terrorist organization by the
US State Department in Washington? The answer lies in the
convoluted somersaults produced by the "war on terror",
wherein former enemies became best friends and vice-versa.
With an estimated 3,400 Iranian exiles in residence, Camp
Ashraf is located in Diyala governorate, just 100 kilometers
from the Iranian border. From its redoubts in Iraq, the MEK
had been carrying on a nearly two decades-long war to topple
the Islamic regime in Tehran. Formed in 1965 as a Marxist
guerrilla movement to oppose the American-allied
pro-capitalist Shah Reza Pahlavi, the MEK evolved into a
serious threat to the ayatollah-dominated post-1979 Islamic
Republic through a series of bombings and assassinations on
establishment figures.
Its aim of forming a "democratic and secular government" in
Iran through violent means invited harsh retaliation from
the regime during and after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's
stewardship.
Driven underground and into exile, first in France and then
in Saddam's Iraq, the MEK continued its assassination and
political destabilization agenda on Iranian soil right up to
the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Since the MEK had
tactically allied with Saddam, it was initially treated by
the invading American forces as an enemy that had to be
reined in. But in April 2003, US special forces entered into
a controversial ceasefire agreement with the MEK and took
its fighters into "protection" by citing international
humanitarian law.
That a regular flouter of international such as former US
defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld would take recourse to the
Geneva Conventions to justify befriending the MEK in 2003
was nothing but fishy. Since the neo-conservative goal of
the George W Bush administration was to use Iraq as a launch
pad to force regime change in Iran, the MEK could have been
viewed by the "terror warriors" as a handy instrument to
prepare for the next front - an invasion of Iran.
The US military was "guarding" Camp Ashraf up to early 2009
with a definite intent to benefit from the MEK's knowledge
of conditions inside Iran. The MEK must have been consulted
by the Americans during Bush's second term, when contingency
plans for invading Iran from the "left flank" were being
continually drawn.
According to some Western media reports, the MEK has "more
recently supplied the United States with information about
Iran's nuclear program". Just as the US courted dissident
Iraqis living in exile to help organize the overthrow of
Saddam, the MEK would have been a vital cog if the "war on
terror" had to cross the border and enter Iran.
On one hand, American commanders in Iraq were accusing Iran
of violating Iraq's sovereignty by arming and funding the
anti-US resistance, while on the other hand, the US was
harboring Iranian MEK fighters to probe and poke at Iran's
sovereignty.
The MEK figured well in a tit-for-tat strategy game until US
President Barack Obama's ascent to power. The new American
administration's determination to scale down the US military
commitment to Iraq and to seek "unclenched fist" relations
with Iran reduced the utility of the MEK for forward
planning.
From the MEK's point of view, it may be feeling used and
betrayed by the Americans in a sport of shifting goals and
alliances. So battered is the MEK from the latest showdown
with Iraqi enforcers at Camp Ashraf that its female leader,
Maryam Rajavi, is seeking an "international" (read American)
guarantee not to be prosecuted if her fighters are deported
to Iran.
Given Iran's past track record of viciously hunting down MEK
operatives, the chances of repatriated militants being
pardoned are razor-thin. The worst nightmare for the MEK is
of total American abandonment that would lead to it being
thrown like lambs before the Iranian state's hungry wolves.
The MEK's setbacks in Iraq are not the only gains for Iran
of late. On its eastern border with Pakistan, Iran faces
another shadowy terrorist organization called Jundullah, a
Sunni outfit active in the province of Sistan-o-Balochistan.
Claiming to represent the rights of oppressed Sunni Balochs
in Iran, Jundullah has been blamed for sabotage,
assassinations and bombings carried out near the
Pakistani-Iranian border. Jundullah is said to have been
created in 2003 and assisted by the US Central Intelligence
Agency as part of the "eastern flank"' invasion planning
against Iran.
Iranian army and intelligence figures allege that Jundullah
is funded by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, two American allies
with a long history of promoting Sunni fundamentalism.
Although Pakistan has declared Jundullah a terrorist
organization, Iranian officials often question Islamabad's
failure to take credible action against its cadres who roam
about freely in Pakistani Balochistan. The prominent
Pakistani journalist, Hamid Mir, wrote recently in The News
about the perception that Pakistan is deliberately "silent
over the role of the CIA in Balochistan which is using
Jundullah against Iran".
Despite the alleged collusion among the US, Pakistan and
Saudi Arabia to nurture Jundullah, Tehran has been steadily
striking hard against this separatist group claiming
independence for the two million Sunni Balochs in Iran. In
mid-July, 14 Jundullah agents were executed publicly in the
Iranian city of Zahedan for their complicity in a series of
attacks on Iranian government personnel and civilians.
Unlike the turnaround with Iraq on the MEK, Iran still lacks
solid cooperation from Pakistan to be able to thoroughly
defeat Jundullah. But the stern punishments and round-ups in
Sistan province are making it harder for Jundullah to
maintain credible striking capability against the Iranian
state.
The net result of the weakening of the MEK and of Jundullah
is ironic. Iran is currently shaking from the deep internal
political fracas following President Mahmud Ahmadinejad's
controversial re-election, with even the conservative clergy
deeply divided. The suzerainty of Supreme Leader Ayatollah
Ali Khamenei has never before been so openly challenged as
it is now, with critics like defeated presidential candidate
Mir Hossein Mousavi painting the country as a "prison of 70
million people". Externally, however, in Iraq and on its
borderlands with Pakistan, Iran is emerging stronger.
A weak government with an improving external security
environment is an oddity that portends more internal
bickering in times to come. If the hand of the security
establishment is buoyed by the gains against the MEK and
Jundullah, and if there is simultaneous downsizing of the
power of the clerical class inside the country, Iran's
theocracy may be morphing into a military dictatorship in
all but name.
Sreeram Chaulia is associate professor of world
politics at the Jindal Global Law School in Sonipat,
India.
(Copyright 2009 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights
reserved. Please contact us about
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