For those who think it’s pretty cool to show off their purple thumbs, the foreign policy problems created by having a friendly government to Tehran in Baghdad should give you pause.
Even more troubling is that the non-Kurdish Sunnis are certain to be underrepresented. While the grand talk of democracy is great, it might have been a good idea to try and put in a circuit breaker in the institutional design that guaranteed a proportion of seats based on the block of voters in the general population.
You know, like a Electoral College or something.
No one knows where this is heading, but I’m not terribly comforted by the thought of Iran gaining a huge ally in the region at the same time some countries are trying to force its hand on nuclear weapons.
But they had blue fingers!
Didn’t you see their blue fingers?
Blue
Fingers
How much do you really know about the Shiites?
During the bad old days of Saddam Hussein and the Iran-Iraq war, the Iranians tried really hard to get the Shiites to revolt, and they had plans to annex the Shiite majority areas of Iraq into Iran: that was why they kept launching offensive after offensive aimed at Karbala. It turned out, oddly enough, that the Iraqi Shiites weren’t all that keen on their fellow Iranians..even the Iraqi Shiites who are Iranians (like Ayatollah Sistani).
The version of Shiism that the Iranian government has put out is not the standard. It is, in fact, heretical to the vast majority of Shiites. So it is not a given that Iraq’s Shiites, asuming that they prove to be the dominant force in Iraq’s future government, will be all that friendly to Iran. If one of the Shiites who is either Iranian-connected or who holds to Iranian theories of clerical rule comes to the fore, I have a sneaking suspicion that they’ll turn out to be very independent of Iran: Muqtada al-Sadr will probably be verging on hostile if he gets power. (He’s not gogin to want to be an Iranian satrap)
I have no doubt that a Shiite-dominated Iraqi government will be friendlier to Iran than the previous government was, but we’ve had a government in Afghanistan that’s fiarly friendly to Iran since the end of 2001 vice a previously quite hostile one, and that’s not been the end of the world.
But remember, Shiites are not a monolith, even the ones who are (like most Iraqi and Iranian Shiites) Twelver Shiites. (And the Iranian government is a sub-faction among the Twelvers.)
Even in the event that direct clerical rule becomes a reality in Iraq, I wonder if Iraqi clerics will be all that keen on taking orders from a guy like Ayatollah Khameini, Iran’s current Supreme leader, who was given his title and religious authority by fiat from Ayatollah Khomeini, and, in the traditional Shiite pecking order, isn’t even really qualified to be a cleric.
I’m very aware of the separation of government and religion that most Shiites accept and understand how Khomeini was rejected by those like Sistani. Sistani has continued that separation, but at the same time is supporting candidates who are looking to impose Islamic law in less than a benign way.
We will not likely see religious councils as we see in Iran that have veto over governments, but I’m not sure how that matters in the short run of who the government is likely to be supportive.
Now, in terms of reform from a tightly controlled country, such a system would be easier to reform–the sticking point in Iran is when the religious leaders veto government reforms or reformers, but this is hardly comforting as I’d rather have supported liberal elements now instead of bumbling into a Shiite dominated system that will be friendly to Iran and provide a larger geographic base for the troubling elements in Shia Islam.
The difference between Iraq and Afganstan are quite great and start with the level of resources and relative impact on the region. In terms of US interests, Afghanistan is only of interest in terms of not being a base of operation for Islamists. Iraq’s strategic position is far greater being on the border of one of our better and more promising allies in Jordan and sitting atop a lot more oil and making it a hell of a lot closer to Israel.
The problem I have with your thinking is what you’ve repeated again: the idea that Iraqi Shiites are going to necessarily be friendly to Iran. ‘Taint necessarily so. (I’m sure they’ll be friendlier to Iran than Saddam was, but that’s not hard to do).
Sistani is a liberal element in Iraq, weird as that may seem to us in the West, say, when we read on his web site about how chess is haram.
I have major problems with how the occupation ahs been conducted (incompetent would be a kind word) but another center of Shiite power is going to diminish the influence of Tehran, especially once Najaf reasserts itself as rival theological center to Qom. There is a traditional rivalry there, quashed by the Baath party, and it has left Qom as the leading center for training Shiite clerics. Especially if Sistani is percieved as being the leading figure behind a transforamtion in Iraq, that rivalry wil be strong.
I’m far more distrubed by the troubling elements among the Sunni, who have been strengthened by the incompetent occupation.
I’d also disagree with the idea of Aghanistan being peripheral to our interests, given the role Afghanistan has palyed in the India-Pakistan rivalry.
First, let me sayl, you make good points and I don’t think we disagree as much as it may seem.
Sistani is relatively liberal compared to most of the Iranian religious leaders, but that doesn’t make him anything like a liberal in the sense of wanting a liberal democracy.
And there were some liberal democratic elements in Iran and Lawrence Kaplan writes on this in the New Republic (I’ll do a post on it in the next 24 hours). They are bankrupt, fleeing the country, dead or intimidated largely because of the inept handling of the occupation.
There are two problems in the case of Sistani. One is that he is probably on good behavior in terms of the US since he has every desire and incentive to have Shiites do well in the election and the next election.
Now Sistani isn’t just going to change his views, but it’s also not clear that he or his school of thought will dominate the landscape.
But good points, and I’ll add another post probably tomorrow giving some details on the issue in greater context and not just a flip answer–though I think the results aren’t nearly as unambigously good regardless of this particular issue.