How to win in Iraq without losing to Iran

In the mid-1980s, when Saddam's defeat became a real possibility, the Pentagon introduced the US Navy into the conflict. While the ostensible purpose was to escort tankers carrying Kuwaiti oil through the Gulf to foreign destinations, this was an overt American tilt toward Iraq. The war ended in a draw.

Following the expulsion of the occupying Iraqi forces from Kuwait in February 1991, President George H.W. Bush, leading a coalition of 28 nations, called on Iraqis to rise up against Saddam. The Kurds in the north did, and so did the Shiites in the south. The US came to the rescue of the Iraqi Kurds under the guise of the UN Security Council resolution 688 concerning "the repression of Iraqi civilian population." By contrast, Saddam deployed helicopter gun ships and mowed down Shiite rebels in the south without anybody raising a finger.

Having broken the wall of a dam, the current Bush administration finds itself engaged in a zero-sum game, as a virtual equal, with Iran in the region. That is, America's loss has become Iran's automatic gain, and vice-versa. As such, reducing Iran's influence to zero in Iraq, as was the case during the long rule of the pan-Arab Baath Party, is a grossly unrealistic aim.

On the other side, Iran's leaders have made a realistic assessment of the Iraqi scene. They realise that, leaving aside a secular minority, Shiites are divided among four religious parties, two parts of Maliki's coalition government and the other two in opposition. Iran treats all equally. That’s why they succeeded in brokering a ceasefire between Maliki's government and the Mahdi Army militia of Moqtada al Sadr in Basra on March 30.

The Iranian government is close to the leading members of Maliki's coalition government - Al Daawa, headed by Maliki, and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq of Ayatollah Abdul Aziz al Hakim. The latter was established in Tehran in 1982 during the Iran-Iraq War. Its militia, the Badr Brigades, was raised, trained and armed by Iran.

Al Daawa leaders, including Maliki, took refuge in Iran during the course of the Iran-Iraq war. Little wonder, that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad greeted Maliki as a long-lost brother during two visits to Tehran. Maliki returned the hospitality when Ahmadinejad visited Baghdad last month. Though the five-year-old Sadrist movement does not owe birth or sustenance to Iran, Sadr takes refuge there when he finds his life endangered in Iraq.

The Iranian government deplored the spectacle of Shiites killing one another when Maliki launched his offensive in Basra with the purported aim of disarming rogue militias, with the toll mounting to more than 300 in a week. Once the Americans and the British had intervened on Maliki's side, Iran had no qualms about assisting the Mahdi Army militia at a tactical command level. That apparently provided the latest evidence to Petraeus underscoring the "destructive role" of Iran.

US voters may be impatient to pull out of Iraq, but it’s no longer an issue of securing Iraq. The scenario of an independent Iraq without the American military protection has become inextricably linked with regional power balance between rising Shiite Iran and the predominantly Sunni Arab Middle East. If a Democratic candidate is elected president in November, he or she must devise a plan to bring the US troops home from Iraq which, somehow, deprives Iran from acquiring even greater influence in the region. Thus, due to the Bush administration's policy blunders, Iraq has now become an Iranian issue as well.