Iran says ready to fill vacuum in Iraq left by U.S.

[Henny]

Iran says ready to fill vacuum in Iraq left by U.S.
Tue Aug 28, 2007 2:15PM EDT
By Edmund Blair

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran is ready to fill a vacuum in Iraq caused by the collapsing power of the United States, its president said on Tuesday.

"The political power of the occupiers (of Iraq) is being destroyed rapidly and very soon we will be witnessing a great power vacuum in the region," Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said.

"We, with the help of regional friends and the Iraqi nation, are ready to fill this void." Saudi Arabia was one of the countries Iran was ready to work with, he said.

The U.S. military accuses the Islamic Republic of arming and training militias behind some of the violence in Iraq. Iran rejects the charge and blames the presence of U.S. forces, numbering about 162,000, for the violence.

In a two-hour news conference, Ahmadinejad also rejected reports Iran had slowed nuclear work, which the West fears is aimed at making atom bombs, and said it would respond if Washington branded its Revolutionary Guards a terrorist force.

Iran, which like Iraq is majority Shi'ite Muslim, has often called on fellow Gulf states to reach a regional security pact. But Gulf Arab states, most of which are predominantly Sunnis, are suspicious of Tehran's intentions in Iraq and the region.

With Shi'ite Muslims now in power in Baghdad, ties have strengthened between Iran and Iraq since 2003, when U.S.-led forces toppled Iraq's Sunni president, Saddam Hussein, who had waged an eight-year war against Iran in the 1980s.

The region did not need countries from "thousands of kilometers away" to provide security, Ahmadinejad said, and U.S. and other forces in Iraq and Afghanistan had run out of solutions.

"TRAPPED IN A SWAMP"

"They are trapped in the swamp of their own crimes," Ahmadinejad said. "If you stay in Iraq for another 50 years nothing will improve, it will just worsen."

In Washington, the U.S. State Department dismissed Ahmadinejad's comments as "unhelpful" and said Iran's claims to care about the people of Iraq were undermined by its support for violent militias.

"Unfortunately, there is no shortage of support for terrorism or militias or violence or instability in Iraq right now from the Iranian government," State Department spokesman Tom Casey said.

U.S. and Iranian officials have held several rounds of talks on security in Iraq since May, the most high-profile meetings since Washington cut ties with Tehran after students took U.S. diplomats hostage following the 1979 revolution.

Washington is also leading efforts to isolate Iran over its nuclear program, which it says is an attempt to build bombs under cover of a civilian program. Tehran denies the charge and says it is seeking only nuclear-generated electricity.

The U.N. Security Council has imposed two sets of sanctions on Tehran since December. Diplomats say Iran's sensitive atomic work seems to have slowed, either for fear of new steps or because of technical hitches.

But Ahmadinejad dismissed reports it was not making such fast nuclear progress. "These (reports) are not true," he said.

"I want to officially announce to you that from our viewpoint the issue of Iran's nuclear case has been closed. Today Iran is a nuclear Iran, meaning that it has the complete cycle for fuel production."

U.S. officials said this month Washington might soon name the Revolutionary Guards a foreign terrorist group, a move that would enable the United States to target the force's finances.

"It would be a joke I guess," said Ahmadinejad, himself a former Guards commander.

[gipper]

Short of a cataclysm, this is a fate we seriously have to consider ... and manage expertly. It may be that, with Iraq in its orbit, Iran will be the center of a new Cold War with the West, nuclear armed. Contemplate it, folks, but contemplate the alternative.

[sirs]

Under the proper heading this would be "well of course".  This has been one of the most substantive and public reasons for us remaining to assist Iraq develop their democracy and self sustainability.  And yet such comments were so often "pffft" on

[gipper]

In your haste, Sirs, or because of your trouble with language, it seems you missed the major point of my comment. Which would be worse, Sirs?

[sirs]

Apparently I have trouble with language and civility.  Perhaps you can prompt a query with a less arrogant tone, to which we can then generate some substantive dialog.  You game?

[Xavier_Onassis]

It apparently did not occur to Juniorbush, Rummy and Cheney that Iran, rather than moving away to another continent, would continue to be a neighbor with Iraq no matter what the US occupation might have accomplished there. Iran and Iraq and both majority Shiite and surrounded by Sunnis.  If the US believes in democracy, it has to accept a Shiite leadership in Iraq.

Ahmedinejahd obviously likes to tee off the US in the local press. It gets him votes.

[sirs]

If the US believes in democracy, it has to accept a Shiite leadership in Iraq.

Who says they haven't??       

[Michael Tee]

I think Iran is similar to China in some ways.  Both threw off a U.S. puppet regime and both then went their own ways.  Both are ancient nations and civilizations that have survived into modern times, with proud and resourceful people whose energies, once liberated from foreign domination, will work sometimes independently of the ideologies that liberated them from foreign domination.  (Of course, in Iraq's case, the Shi'ite fundamentalists were only one of the ideologies that liberated them, but it was the one that rose to the top in the power struggle that followed the overthrow of the puppet regime.)

I say this in fairness to the Bush regime, whose stupidity and lawless militarism have often been blamed for Iranian ascendancy.  To some extent, that ascendancy was inevitable.

Iran is a regional powerhouse and no realistic account of the regional geography can change that.  Just as the ascendancy of Iran was inevitable, so too is its ultimate acquisition of nuclear weapons.  As a nuclear power, Iran will always rank far behind the U.S.A., Russia, China, Britain and France.  There is absolutely nothing that stands in the way of peaceful coexistence between the U.S.A. and a nuclear-armed Iran.  Considering the long history of peaceful or not-so-peaceful coexistence between the U.S., Russia and China, it is absurd to claim that a nuclear-armed Iran is "unacceptable." 

What IS "unacceptable" to U.S. policy-makers, and particularly to the Zionists and neo-cons among them, is a sovereign, independent Iran, charting its own course by its own lights, without regard to the interests of the U.S.A. or Israel.  Hence, the blather about the "nuclear threat" of Iran and the underlying purposes that it serves.

[gipper]

Very perceptive post, Michael, as is so often the case. You lose that thread of rationality with your coda: "What IS 'unacceptable' to U.S. policy-makers, and particularly to the Zionists and neo-cons among them, is a sovereign, independent Iran, charting its own course by its own lights, without regard to the interests of the U.S.A. or Israel.  Hence, the blather about the 'nuclear threat' of Iran and the underlying purposes that it serves." That is blather. The concerns are sincere, if misguided, as the rest of your post addresses. There are two primary US interests concerning Iran, as I see it: the security of Israel, and the continued flow of affordable oil for as long as we need it. Period. Internecine Sunni-Shiite schisms are not really our concern, except incidentally. Save for this, however, I TEND to agree with your analysis as astute, and plucky.

[Michael Tee]

domer, it's a source of constant amazement to me that people whom I would in all other respects consider rational and well-informed, can willfully close their eyes to certain basic facts, such as: 1.  the influence of right-wing Zionist (Likudnik or neocon) thinking in U.S politics generally and particularly in the Bush administration; 2. the Western drive for Middle East hegemony, originally spear-headed by Britain and France and then, after WWII, increasingly by the U.S.A. in the wake of the slow withdrawal of the European colonial powers; and 3. oil as the major motivating factor in that drive and the major item of value in the region.

I am not suggesting, as the lunatic fringe does, that "the Jews" control America or even control America's Middle East policy.  As even Noam Chomsky points out, America acts in its own perceived self-interest in the Middle East, but the neocons are skillfully doing everything they can to promote that particular vision of American self-interest and keep U.S. policy there in line with Israeli interests.  They are particularly useful in rationalizing that policy to the broader American public with arguments (sophistry, actually) that ostensibly have nothing to do with Israeli interests.   I also point out that the neocons or Likudniks do NOT have a lock on Zionism or Israeli self-interest either, they are promoting nothing more than their own vision of Zionism and where that interest lies.  The original Zionists were Labour Zionists (socialists) and they are still around, albeit in increasingly diminishing numbers.

Given the history of the U.S. in the region, given the interests and temperaments of the current American political leadership and their financial backers, given even the personal histories of the individuals serving in the Bush administration, it is just inconceivable to me that (a) any of them could ever have seriously considered that Iraq was a serious threat to America or (b) that they would devote anywhere near the amounts of money and effort to the conquest of Iraq merely to bring them the sudden benefits of "democracy" or (c) that anything other than oil could have motivated either the invasion or the ongoing occupation.

[gipper]

We won't solve whatever differences may remain between us tonight. I'm arguing for a "clean" version of American interests, unsullied by recent distortions.

[Henny]

I think Iran is similar to China in some ways.  Both threw off a U.S. puppet regime and both then went their own ways. 

I've been reading Chinese history in bits and pieces for some time now, and I'm fascinated with it. But I'm confused - when did the U.S. have a puppet regime in China?

Western countries treated China terribly (one can hardly blame them for slamming the doors shut and embracing communism), but while Britain, Germany, France, etc., claimed pieces of China for their own (as well as Russia and Japan), the U.S. involvement was minimal.

[Michael Tee]

<<I've been reading Chinese history in bits and pieces for some time now, and I'm fascinated with it. But I'm confused - when did the U.S. have a puppet regime in China?>>

General Chiang Kai-Shek, probably through the influence of his wife, Soong Mei-Ling (a sister-in-law of Dr. Sun Yat-Sen and the daughter of one of the wealthiest families in China,) became a leader of the anti-Communist forces in China following his crushing of the Communist uprising in Shanghai in (I think) 1928.  He was strongly supported by Western capital and military assistance.  Prior to America's entry into WWII, Chiang battled both the Communists and the Japs with his own private American air force, the "Flying Tigers," run by American General Claire Chennault, and during the war he was closely advised by American Generals, starting with General Joseph ("Vinegar Joe") Stillwell, later replaced by someone not so colourful, whose name I forget.  Chiang had powerful support in Washington ("the China Lobby") because he was a faithful servitor of American interests.  For years after he lost the mainland to Mao's Communists, the China Lobby was able to block American diplomatic recognition of "Red China" and continued to maintain the fiction that Chiang's KMT government, now in control only of Formosa (Taiwan) - - where it had massacred 900,000 Taiwanese protesting against its rule - - was the sole official government of China and its people.  For years a staple of McCarthyist accusations against numerous Democrats and high-placed civil servants (Dean Acheson, for example) was that they had "lost China."

[Henny]

<<I've been reading Chinese history in bits and pieces for some time now, and I'm fascinated with it. But I'm confused - when did the U.S. have a puppet regime in China?>>

General Chiang Kai-Shek, probably through the influence of his wife, Soong Mei-Ling (a sister-in-law of Dr. Sun Yat-Sen and the daughter of one of the wealthiest families in China,) became a leader of the anti-Communist forces in China following his crushing of the Communist uprising in Shanghai in (I think) 1928.  He was strongly supported by Western capital and military assistance.  Prior to America's entry into WWII, Chiang battled both the Communists and the Japs with his own private American air force, the "Flying Tigers," run by American General Claire Chennault, and during the war he was closely advised by American Generals, starting with General Joseph ("Vinegar Joe") Stillwell, later replaced by someone not so colourful, whose name I forget.  Chiang had powerful support in Washington ("the China Lobby") because he was a faithful servitor of American interests.  For years after he lost the mainland to Mao's Communists, the China Lobby was able to block American diplomatic recognition of "Red China" and continued to maintain the fiction that Chiang's KMT government, now in control only of Formosa (Taiwan) - - where it had massacred 900,000 Taiwanese protesting against its rule - - was the sole official government of China and its people.  For years a staple of McCarthyist accusations against numerous Democrats and high-placed civil servants (Dean Acheson, for example) was that they had "lost China."

Thank you, MT. I'm still reading and learning and have focused on either 19th Century Chinese history and then Mao's China - but I guess I need to fill in some gaps. Any recommendation for reading material would be appreciated.

[Michael Tee]

There are probably some good non-fiction books by E.B. ("Ted") White, a former TIME magazine correspondent in China, but I've only read one of them, "The Mountain Road," a fictionalized account of a true incident that White witnessed in China during the war, where deserting  KMT soldiers clashed with their nominal American allies during a retreat.   Andr? Malraux also wrote about his experiences in China in the 1920s and 30s, but again the only thing I read by Malraux was the English translation of "Man's Fate," a story of the failed Communist uprising in Shanghai.  Although those books are fiction, they are both by experienced "China hands" and give a very good picture, including some historical background, of conditions and life in China that you will not get from purely historical sources.

Most of what I know of China (apart from the fiction I mentioned, which is very realistic) came from reading TIME magazine regularly  during the late 40s and the 50s (you had to read between the lines because TIME was an extremely right-wing publication at the time,) biographies of Generals Chennault and Stillwell (sorry I can't recall the authors) and plenty of conversations with my dad, who was extremely well-informed in world affairs.  Although I haven't looked at Wikipedia, I would think that its articles on Chiang, Mao, the KMT (Kuomintang) Party and even China itself would be very helpful.  You might want to check for any references to the Soong family as well.  This family produced four very powerful but politically diverse daughters including Mme. Chiang, a leader of the Chinese Communist Party and the widow of Dr. Sun Yat Sen.

for some reason the accent over the final "e" in the name of (I will spell this phonetically) ondray mal-ROE, came out as a question mark, but I did spell it correctly the first time, "A.N.D.R.E." with an accent over the "e."