Dublin Opinion

Currently, the most read article on the Guardian Unlimited site is this one about the US allegation that Iran has a secret plan for a summer offence designed to oust the US from Iraq. The very experienced reporter Simon Tisdall cites an unnamed US official as saying:

“Tehran’s strategy to discredit the US surge and foment a decisive congressional revolt against Mr Bush is national in scope and not confined to the Shia south, its traditional sphere of influence, the senior official in Baghdad said. It included stepped-up coordination with Shia militias such as Moqtada al-Sadr’s Jaish al-Mahdi as well as Syrian-backed Sunni Arab groups and al-Qaida in Mesopotamia, he added.”

Weird isn’t it, that such an experience reporter, writing for such an esteemed publication as The Guardian, should publish a story based on a single source, which in this case is a US official in Bagdad?

And is it not in the US Administration’s interest to suggest that Iran is developing coordinated attacks in Iraq?
Well, Juan Cole isn’t having any of it.

“Yes, its sources are looney in positing a coming offensive jointly sponsored by Iran, the Mahdi Army and al-Qaeda. Anyone who reads IC regularly will see immediately holes in this story. At a time when Sunni Arab guerrillas are said to be opposing “al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia” for its indiscriminate violence against Iraqis, including Shiites, we are now expected to believe that Shiite Iran is allying with it. And, it claims that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards are shelling the Green Zone. The parliament building that was hit to day by such shelling is dominated by the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council and its paramilitary, the Badr Organization. Who trained Badr? The Iranian Revolutionary Guards. And they are trying to hit their own guys . . . why?

According to the Guardian report, the official said: “We expect that al-Qaida and Iran will both attempt to increase the propaganda and increase the violence prior to Petraeus’s report in September [when the US commander General David Petraeus will report to Congress on President George Bush’s controversial, six-month security “surge” of 30,000 troop reinforcements].”

So the US administration, on the same day that the Democrats relented on their insistence that any “war spending measure [should also] set a date for withdrawing American combat troops from Iraq” is issuing its own propaganda and using the veritable Guardian to do it. Or so it would seem – see update below.

According to the New York Times today Democrats consider their recent mid-term victory to be founded on their ability to force the setting of a date for withdrawal. However, rather than at least appearing to face down Bush and his veto in order to do this, what are they going to do instead?
Well, now apparently, they plan to move “toward a deal with President Bush that would impose new conditions on the Iraqi government.”

Brilliant. Oh right, this is the same Iraqi Government that has so much control over its affairs that it is easily seeing off the US imposition of a Petroleum Law.

Again from Informed Comment, referring to an AP report:

“Senior Kurdish lawmaker Mahmoud Othman confirmed that U.S. pressure was mounting, especially on the oil bill, which was endorsed by the Iraqi Cabinet three months ago but has yet to come to the floor of parliament.

“The Americans are pressuring us to accept the oil law. Their pressure is very strong. They want to show Congress that they have done something so they want the law to be adopted this month. This interference is negative and will have consequences,” Othman told AP.”

Whether you believe that the US is in Iraq for the oil or not, it seems clear that the Iraqi Government is actually very weak.

Update
An update on my post about Iraq yesterday. I realise that this smacks of conspiracy, but I’m going to spout on any way.

Today, the most read article in the Guardian is Simon Tisdall’s other piece from yesterday’s Guardian, which describes US plans for UN involvement should the surge fail. Once again the majority of the info comes from a former senior administration official, one who is ‘familiar with administration thinking’.

The plan, which is claimed to be in development, is designed to offset criticism of the US’s involvement in Iraq prior to the US elections in 2008. Basically, to nip the Democrats use of the conflict in Iraq in the bud.

To quote the lead paragraph:

“The Bush administration is developing plans to “internationalise” the Iraq crisis, including an expanded role for the United Nations, as a way of reducing overall US responsibility for Iraq’s future and limiting domestic political fallout from the war as the 2008 election season approaches.”

Tisdall also quotes a senior US diplomat as saying: “We foresee a very significant role for the UN and its agencies. The UN has great expertise that is badly needed in Iraq.”

Which sounds like a change of tune. But it’s a diplomat saying it, to reporters, so pardon my skepticism.

The article continues with its reportage:

“Washington’s UN move may receive a more sympathetic hearing now that Kofi Annan, a stern critic of the Iraq invasion, has retired as secretary-general, diplomats say. His successor, Ban Ki-moon, owes his job to US backing and may prove more accommodating.”

Before we accept this version of Kofi Annan, however, we should read Perry Anderson’s excellent article on Kofi and the recent history of the UN in the London Review of Books.

“Annan was never a strong figure, or an independent agent. As a UN bureaucrat, he obviously had his share of vanity and ambition, but it was probably no more, and in some cases less, than that of others. There is no reason to suppose his Americanism was purely calculating, a mere means of self-advancement. It belonged to his formation. He achieved high office as a creature of the Clinton administration, with ties that swaddled him to the end. Although personally fond of Bush and Blair, he never had a comparable rapport with the Republican administration, which lacked the same confidence in him.

When he came under attack over the Oil for Food scandals, it was the Democratic coterie that had elevated him which rallied round. The campaign was led by Richard Holbrooke, imposing the changes in Annan’s entourage that were deemed necessary to save him. In fact, what is really striking about Annan’s tenure as secretary-general is less his personal characteristics than the nature of the inner circle that surrounded him.

From the start, it was overwhelmingly Anglo-American, with a sprinkling of figures from the Anglophone zones of the First or Third World – Canada, Pakistan, India, Gambia – trained, like Annan himself, in the United States. A token Frenchman. Not a Russian, a Chinese, a Japanese, even a German or Italian in sight. The provenance of figures like Robert Orr, head of ‘strategic planning’, lifted straight from the National Security Council in Washington, Louise Fréchette, deputy secretary-general, dispatched from the Defense Ministry in Ottawa, or, lower down the scale, theorists of humanitarian intervention from Harvard or Princeton like John Ruggie and Michael Doyle, speaks for itself.”

There is much more in Anderson’s article to show how much Kofi’s rise to top office had to do with the endorsement of him by a US administration, admittedly from figures in Clinton’s administration. However, it beggers belief how effective the UN would be in resisting manipulation by the US in this case if Ban Ki-moon is even more accomodating than Annan.

Edward Mortimer, one of Annan’s advisors, who is referred to by Anderson in his piece, replies to Anderson’s analysis here, saying that the “article is riddled with forced and distorted interpretation”.

It’s clear though, that the situation in Iraq has to be internationalized. But the plans should be designed in the interests of Iraqi people, to reduce violence and bring real stability. Not as an effort to reduce political fall out for Bush or to help Republicans win the 2008 election.