Iran Joins Other Arab Nations In Jumping On Iraq Attack Bandwagon
by DEBKAfile
30 September 2002
Americas failure to enlist UN Security Council members for a tough new ultimatum to Baghdad is misleading. On the quiet, Washington has made important strides in the bid to assemble an Arab-Muslim coalition for its war effort. Egypt and Saudi Arabia were the first to come on board, although they refrain from publicly admitting to having made their sea and air bases available for the American assault.
According to DEBKAfile s military sources, the big Egyptian military base
at Cairo West has been turned over to the US war command as its foremost logistical
launching pad, while US warships freely navigate the Suez Canal.
The Saudi Prince Sultan air base northeast of Riyadh is now an American forward
base for air raids over southern Iraq. Sunday, September 29, US AWACs took off
from Sultan to escort American bombers raiding Iraqi command posts and radar
systems at the big international airport of Basra, Iraqs port city on
the Persian Gulf. This second American air assault against Basra inside a week
had more than one effect; one was to disable Iraqs potential for striking
out at neighboring Iran and its Khozistan oilfields.
What has happened to place Iran, one of Washingtons fiercest critics,
in Saddams gun-sights? And why are US warplanes protecting the Islamic
Republic?
President George W. Bush and his aides must be patting themselves on the back
this week over the remarkable feat of turning round an implacable foe for its
line-up against Iraq: DEBKA-Net-Weeklys military and Iranian sources report
that months of laborious bargaining have produced a secret US-Iran military
cooperation agreement for the operation to overthrow the Saddam Hussein regime.
Irans first quid pro quo was having its forces co-opted to the assault.
According to our military sources, a several hundred-strong Iranian vanguard
apparently went into northern Iraq some ten days ago. It is believed to be made
up of Iraqi and Afghan rebels fighting in the Badr force, an elite counter-terrorism
contingent of the Revolutionary Guards. US and Turkish special forces officers
escorted the Iranian unit to its deployment zone in the Kurdish Sulimaniyeh
area.
This week, DEBKAfile adds, the military partnership went into political gear.
Iraqi foreign minister Naji Sabri, who flew to Tehran Sunday, September 29 to
seek support against Washington, was coldly informed by President Mohamed Khatami
that Iran wanted the entire Persian Gulf free of weapons of mass destruction.
On his way out, the Iraqi minister almost bumped into Kuwaits defense
minister Sheikh Jaber Mubarak al-Hamad, who arrived on a diametrically opposed
errand: a two-day conference with his Iranian opposite number, Rear Admiral
Ali Shamkhani, on 'collective security'.
According to DEBKAfiles sources in Tehran, the two defense ministers have
been assigned by the US war command to line up their military front against
Iraq.
Iran's still-secret about-face gives substantial ballast to the anti-Saddam
Arab-Muslim alliance put together by the Bush team and offers a rebuttal for
much of the criticism of an American military move against Baghdad coming from
the Democrats in the US Congress, the Europeans led by France and Germany and
the UN secretariat under Kofi Annan. Many critics claim to speak for the Arab
Middle East and Persian Gulf. Now that the strongest Gulf power, Iran, has crossed
the floor and is not the first to do so - President George W. Bush can
claim a regional coalition weightier than the one which confronted Iraq in 1991.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly s Iran experts recall that just before the Afghan War
last October, Washington and Tehran secretly shook hands on a military pact
to do battle against al Qaeda and the Taliban and in particular protect the
Shiite population of W. Afghanistan, especially in the Herat province. That
pact is in effect reaffirmed in a different context.
One key rationale for Tehran is its compulsion to hold onto its influence among
Iraqs Shiites, who make up some 60 percent of the 23 million strong population,
and protect its interests in any future government rising in Baghdad. Ever practical,
the ayatollahs calculated that the American military operation against Saddam
is a foregone conclusion anyway; therefore it was more to their advantage to
jump aboard the speeding American bandwagon than to snipe at the US war effort
from the shrinking opposition.
The Iranians are now keen to pull Syria out of the opposition camp and over
to the American side so as to ward off a potential American or Israeli strike
against the Damascus-based Palestinian radical terror groups and Hizballah strongholds
in South Lebanon.
Tehran was also influenced by the recent outbreak of stormy anti-government
riots in Damascus, reported exclusively by DEBKAfile last Thursday, September
26. The Assad regime turns out to be a lot less stable than thought. Its fall
would remove one of the Hizballahs key props.
Irans crossover to the American side against Iraq does not detract an
iota from its sponsorship of the Hizballahs war against Israel or the
Lebanese governments plan for plugging an important source of Israels
water supply with the Wazzani River diversion project.
This gives Tehran a chance to pull off a double: If the Lebanese get away with
this project under Iranian protection, while at the same time the Iranian-American
military collaboration in Iraq is successful, Irans standing in the Persian
Gulf and Middle East will be much enhanced. At the same time Tehran will not
be required to abandon its ingrained animosity to Israel.
To make sure Israel did not upset the gathering US Islamic-Arab alliance, Washington
forced Israel into a military climb-down in Ramallah, giving Yasser Arafat his
moment of triumph as he emerged from 11 days of Israeli blockade. Pale and trembling
amid the rubble of his government headquarters, he brandished the V-sign for
the tiny following that came out to cheer him.
Although Israeli siege forces have moved back, Arafat is still trapped. His
presence in the only building left standing in his compound is the last shield
protecting his terrorist masterminds from Israels grasp.
DEBKA-Net-Weeklys sources find neither the Americans nor Iranians under
any illusion that their old feud is resolved by their new military accord. But,
as an ad hoc device, this collaboration has made it possible for the United
States to tighten its noose around the necks of Saddam and his regime, while
putting its longstanding war of words with Iran on hold for the duration."