Despite the hype, Ahmadinejad’s Iraq visit a failure
Fox News, March 6, 2008
Transcript
Behind the orchestrated pomp and
pageantry during the visit to Baghdad last weekend by the
Iranian ayatollahs’ president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, it was
hard to miss the revulsion of Iraqis of all stripes.
Adjectives like “historic” could not disguise the
frustrating reality for Ahmadinejad and the ayatollahs:
outside of Iraqi political spheres dominated by Tehran
surrogates, they are seen as enemies of a secure,
non-sectarian and democratic Iraq.
The greeting parties, in the Baghdad airport and later in
various government buildings, were who's who of Tehran’s
proxies in Iraq’s government. They “listened to
Ahmadinejad,” according to McClatchy News Service, “without
need of translation into Arabic, clearly comfortable hearing
his Farsi.” Not surprising; for more than two decades, they
were employed by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps,
the Qods Force, and the Ministry of Intelligence. Learning
Farsi was a job requirement.
Outside of the very limited segment of Baghdad where
Ahmadinejad visited, there was outrage. A young Baghdad
resident told the New York Times, “I think Ahmadinejad is
the most criminal and bloody person in the world. This visit
degrades Iraq’s dignity.” Up north in Kirkuk, where Arab
tribes and political parties rallied against Ahmadinejad’s
visit, a tribal leader told the Times, “How can we tolerate
this? Today we live under the regime of the clerics. The
Iranian revolution has been exported to Iraq.” An Iraqi
businessman added, “His visit is intended to reassure his
followers here,” but is “provoking and enraging” the rest of
Iraq.
In the streets of Baghdad and other cities, the slogans on
the walls and banners at protest rallies were as telling.
Graffiti in Al Habibia neighborhood near Sadr city called
Ahmadinejad “a champion of Islamic nuclear bomb who will
defeat Israel,” but in other neighborhoods, like Al Saydia,
Al Adel and Al Ghzalia, writing on the walls denounced
Ahmadinejad as “a godfather of sectarian violence that
divides Iraq.”
“Your mortars preceded your visit," one placard read.
Another read, “We condemn visit of terrorist and butcher
Ahmadinejad to Iraq," according to the Associated Press. “We
have seen today a visit by [a president] of a state with
hands tarnished by the blood of innocent people in Iraq,
Lebanon, Syria and Palestine,” the leader of the Iraqi
Kirkuk Front declared during a protest rally.
The outrage was widespread among independent Iraqi political
figures of various backgrounds. Abdul-Karim al-Samaraie, a
lawmaker with the Iraqi Accordance Front, told Al-Jazeera TV
that "We wish that there would be a commitment from the
Iranian president personally to cease all kind of
interventions in Iraq's security and political affairs."
Muhammad al-Daini, a member of the Iraqi National Assembly
denounced Ahmadinejad’s visit in an interview with the
Al-Hurra TV channel, and called for the shutdown of the
Iranian regime’s diplomatic offices in Iraq.
Significantly, in a joint statement, over 130 Iraqi tribal
leaders from the Shiite-dominated provinces of southern Iraq
also denounced Ahmadinejad’s visit. “Since five years ago
Iraq has turned into the scene of the Iranian regime’s
meddling and aggression. Everyday hundreds of Iraqis are
victims of the Iranian exported terrorism. In southern Iraq
we are witnessing the murder of our children and ransack of
our oil and other national wealth by the criminal elements
of the Iranian regime,” the statement said. In late 2007,
more than 300,000 Shiite Iraqis, including hundreds of
tribal leaders from the southern provinces, signed a
petition condemning the Iranian regime’s meddling in Iraq
and supporting the presence of the main Iranian opposition
group, the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran
(PMOI/MEK), in Iraq.
Ahmadinejad’s trip was a dismal failure on other levels, as
well. Lost in the headlines was the news that he was shunned
by the leader he most sought after. The meeting Ahmadinejad
desperately coveted was not with Iraqi President Jalal
Talebani or Iraq’s Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki. They are
regular visitors to Tehran. Ahmadinejad and his team, for a
variety of domestic and foreign policy considerations,
sought a photo-op with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani,
Iraq’s most influential Shiite cleric. Ayatollah Sistani,
citing “scheduling conflicts,” snubbed Ahmadinejad, who had
to cancel his trip to Najaf and cut short his Iraq visit by
one day, according to the Iraqi TV channel, al-Sharquiyah.
Before Ahmadinejad’s Baghdad visit, some media reports
indicated that the presence of MEK members in Ashraf city,
60 miles northeast of Baghdad, was going to be a main topic
of discussion with Tehran-friendly Iraqi political leaders.
Eager to please, Iraqi President Jalal Talebani said during
a joint news conference that his government was trying to
expel the MEK, as long demanded by Tehran.
In a rebuke to Talebani, however, U.S. military spokesman
Major Winfield Danielson reiterated that the PMOI members
are under "protected person status" at Ashraf city. He
explained to Reuters News Agency that in 2003 the MEK
members in Ashraf had agreed to give up their arms in
exchange for the protected persons status and had signed a
ceasefire letter in April of that year.
Ahmadinejad’s fear of the MEK based in Ashraf City is rooted
in strategic, practical grounds. According to prominent
Iraqi politicians, since 2003 Ashraf’s residents have acted
as a principal catalyst in bringing about a formidable,
non-sectarian democratic Iraqi front against Tehran’s
meddling in Iraq.
Back in Washington, lawmakers on both sides of the isle were
briefed by top U.S. military commanders about Tehran’s
rising efforts to train, arm, and support militant sectarian
forces in Iraq. The US legislators deplored Ahmadinejad’s
talk about security and stability as the height of
hypocrisy.
Lieutenant General Raymond Odierno, the former number two
U.S. commander in Iraq, told reporters that "What they
[Tehran] ought to stop doing is training surrogates, funding
surrogates and supplying weapons to them, which they are
still doing today.”
Mocking Ahmadinejad’s boast that he could visit Iraq openly,
unlike other foreign leaders who made unannounced visits,
Gen. Odierno said “I'm not surprised. Because over the last
12 months whenever a visitor would come from the United
States, we needed to foil a rocket attack. Guess what? That
is because it was being done by an Iranian surrogate."
"I think it's offensive," said Sen. Carl Levin, (D-Mich.),
Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, of
Ahmadinejad's trip. Sen. John Warner, the committee's
Ranking Republican from Virginia, said, "I would hope that
others in the administration would express their indignation
about this visit and the comments made by that president
because they go to the very heart of the enormity of the
sacrifices of life and limb that we have suffered in trying
to provide Iraq the ability to become a strong and sovereign
nation."
With the hype of Ahmadinejad’s trip behind us, it is back to
reality. The tyrant ayatollahs continue to step up their
support for their terrorist network in Iraq. Meanwhile, they
will try to showcase their surrogates in Iraq’s government
to hide their growing isolation in the streets of Iran and
Iraq.
Alireza Jafarzadeh is a FOX News Channel Foreign Affairs
Analyst and the author of "The
Iran Threat: President Ahmadinejad and the Coming Nuclear
Crisis" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).
Jafarzadeh has revealed Iran's terrorist network in Iraq and
its terror training camps since 2003. He first disclosed the
existence of the Natanz uranium enrichment facility and the
Arak heavy water facility in August 2002.
