Excerpt From Iraq Report

By Guy Dinmore, Financial Times 18 February 2003

SCIRI was set up in 1982 to increase Iranian control over Shiite opposition groups in Iraq and the Persian Gulf states. Its leader, Ayatollah Muhammad Baqr al-Hakim, was the late Ayatollah Khomeini’s choice to head an Islamic Republic of Iraq.

Hakim and his family, most notably his brother Abd al-Aziz, were leaders of the Da’wa (Islamic Call) Party, which allegedly was responsible for a May 1985 attempted assassination of the Amir of Kuwait and the December 1983 attacks on the U.S. and French embassies in Kuwait.

Members of the Hizballah organization in Lebanon that held U.S. hostages in that country during the 1980s often linked release of the Americans to the release of 17 Da’wa Party prisoners held by Kuwait for those offenses.

SCIRI has about 5,000 fighters organized into a Badr Corps (named after a major battle in early Islam). . .Iran’s Revolutionary Guardᰱwhich is politically aligned with Iran’s hard line civilian officials’reportedly continues to provide the Badr Corps with weapons and other assistance. [1]

...

The movement into northern Iraq of Iraqi Shia opposition forces backed by Iran underlines the growing complexity of the task facing the US as it plans its military overthrow of the Baghdad regime and tries to shape a future government to replace it.

The 5,000-strong force said by Iranian officials to have taken up a position about 15 miles inside northern Iraq is there to counter any threat from Saddam Hussein’s army and allies. But it also represents a foothold for the jostling of positions, military and political, once the Iraqi regime has gone.

Ayatollah Mohammad Baqir al-Hakim, a Shia Muslim Arab who heads the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri), regards southern Iraq as his stronghold. Dozens of his relatives have been killed or imprisoned by the Baghdad regime, many after the failed 1991 uprising that was encouraged but then abandoned by the US.

The movement of some of his forces hundreds of miles from southern Iran into northern Iraq appears to have come as a surprise to the US administration, which has been engaged in talks with Sciri, as one of several Iraqi opposition groups, for some years. However, Ayatollah Hakim, based in Tehran since 1980, should not be viewed as an Iranian puppet under Tehran’s tight control, US and Iranian officials say.

But Ayatollah Hakim and Jalal Talabani, head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), whose party controls that area of north-east Iraq now hosting Sciri troops, have long spoken of their military alliance. They have a common interest in containing Ansar al-Islam - an extremist Sunni group suspected of al-Qaeda links that holds a mountainous enclave next to PUK territory - as well as the People’s Mujahideen Organisation, the Baghdad-backed Iranian opposition force. Iranian sources say the US administration privately told Ayatollah Hakim that his role in a democratic Iraqi government would be supported by the US, but that his small army should not intervene during the US invasion.

The US is concerned that advances by Kurdish forces in the north and the Shia in their southern stronghold could lead to widescale ethnic bloodletting directed against the Sunni minority.

Turkish troops are already in northern Iraq, but the US wants them, too, to stay out of the fighting. Turkey is concerned about the potential for large movements of refugees, about the status of the Turkoman minority in Iraq and any move by the Kurdish parties to set up an independent or quasi-independent state, especially if they should control the oil-rich region of Kirkuk.

Analysts say the Bush administration is not speaking with one voice over Iran, with Pentagon hawks concerned the State Department is encouraging too strong an Iranian role.

FOOTNOTES

[1] Iraq: U.S. Efforts to Change the Regime Update January 8, 2003,

By Kenneth Katzman Specialist in Middle Eastern Affairs Foreign Affairs, Defense and Trade Division, Congressional Research Service * Library of Congress http://www.usembassy.at/en/download/pdf/iraq_regimechange.pdf

[2]* ’How NATO Brought Hell To A Kosovo Town,’ by Jared Israel http://emperors-clothes.com/analysis/savethe-a.htm

[3]Regarding the Racak massacre hoax, see, ’Racak - the Impossible Massacre,’ at http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/Johnstone/racakhoax.htm

[4] For the Northwoods document and analysis, see, Northwoods: A Plan for Terror to Justify War, at http://emperors-clothes.com/images/north-int.htm

[5] For articles discussing the evidence that the US-led Empire has sponsored Islamic Terrorism, go to :

One might wonder how seriously to take a denial by unnamed Iranian and US officials that Iran controls SCIRI. Wouldn’t the Iranians have a motive to lie? And mightn’t US officials have such a motive as well? According to the Financial Times:

Analysts say the Bush administration is not speaking with one voice over Iran, with Pentagon hawks concerned the State Department is encouraging too strong an Iranian role.

Note that the alleged dispute between the Pentagon and State is not over *whether* Iran should play a role, but how *much*!

If SCIRI is a tool of Fundamentalist forces in Iran’and this seems likely’and if the US Establishment means for these forces to play a big role in post-Hussein Iraq, then US officials would certainly have reason to deny that SCIRI is a tool of Iran.

After all, how enthusiastic would the public be for a regime change if our leaders said they meant to depose the unappetizing Mr. Hussein and replace him with the equally unappetizing Ayatollahs?

I would not take the claim that there is in fact a dispute too seriously. Someone is always saying the State Department and Pentagon are fighting. Yet they seem to unite in the end. I think our exalted leaders spread such tales deliberately. In this Empire of smoke and mirrors, our leaders know that if they present an image of disunity, it will give everyone something to root for.